Nineteen years and counting in Papua New Guinea

Piety a la mode

 

 
 

Pass the pie chart bro

Thanks again to www.corruptpngleaders.blogspot.com

Mogare-Sumabe's cartoon cabinet (or: tough love in the time of cholera)

 

All but the last image courtesy of www.corruptpngleaders.blogspot.com
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Remittance governance

Imagine if Rudd, Merckel, Brown or Sarkozy sent their families overseas to live, study, be treated medically, support sports teams, shop for basics and invest in real estate? What would their constituents say? Imagine if a British MP urged his family to move to another country for reasons of safety---and he bought a million kina home there, sent his children to the very best schools. How would the police, health department, school teachers and general constituents---from settlement dwellers to small businessmen---feel?

When Indonesian and Malaysian politicians do as much people tend to shrug in the knowledge that there has always been iniquity. They think it natural that kickbacks, unregistered gifts, paper bags of unmarked money and ghost employees on the payroll are the going price for governance, and that the rich are the rich, the poor are the poor, and never the twain shall meet.

Ah, but in Indonesia and Malaysia the MPs don’t swan about with hibiscus in their hair, gladhanding villagers to prove their grassroots mettle. There isn’t the everyman ethos, the stress on humility as first among equals.

What then do we call a country richer than Croesus by minerals, that boasts a functioning parliamentary democracy but takes pride in its rural horticultural base and traditional cultures, with an emergent peasant economy, its hand out to the lowliest of bidders, and the most elite citizens residing overseas?

 

See no, hear no, speak no dissent

 

Dear National:

I wish to comment on the piece in the paper for Thursday Oct 29 page 4 titled 'US expat rebuked over 'racist tirade'--referring to a column in the Post-Courier on October 24th that excerpted something from my blog. I would recommend that the National, an RH-owned newspaper, go back to the blog itself a re-read the particulars of my comments, which specifically advised my readership to discern the differences between different Asians in PNG today. The fact that the RH Malaysians come off badly in the piece is entirely interpretative, as I cite several Chinese bloggers directly who make their own anti-Papua New Guinean racist comments.To conclude the article by quoting Mr Ho as saying ' the absurdity of this would not be lost on anyone who understands the differences between Asian communities' is exactly my point----clearly he has not read the original blog (www.nancysullivan.typepad.com).

As a newspaper, you have a responsibility to present even-handed material, and at very least, read the documents you refer to in an article.

Nancy Sullivan

 

From the people now running the PNG Government: Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy

Maybe some insight into the Grand Chief's corporate rationale may be found in a document from the East Sepik Provincial Government during his son’s administration, a little something called the East Sepik Provincial Corporate Plan 2004.

  I reproduce it verbatim (believe me):

Key Watershed Thoughts

Watershed of your resolutions

Five words or actions of your watershed

First.watershed is the divide of the flow to basins/seas

 

DREAM

Some people see things as they are and ask why.

I dream of things that have never been and ask why now?

George Bernard Shaw [sic!]

 

BELIEVE

Life is a buffet and not a sit down meal. No one is going to serve you.

Sensualize your dream

Motivation comes from sensualization

Motivation leads to action

 

DARE

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all

Liking what others do not like

Doing what others do not do

Say right to what others say wrong

Legitimize what others say is illegal

ANTICIPATE (Thinking)

If I were on trial for thinking and anticipating creatively, what evidence would the prosecution use against me

Is thinking wrong?

Is anticipation wrong?

CARE

Reaping what you sow

What you send out comes back

We care if we want to be cared for

Do not forget the 95% rule of common [sic] and simplicity

Global warming and the twilight of democracy in PNG

 
Today was an excellent day for news, if you’re a cynic.

In case anyone doubted the editorial bent of a newspaper owned by a Malaysian logging company, today’s National was a lesson in media strategy. While Asian businessmen win the hearts and wallets of elites in Port Moresby, their minions work on the rest of us with the ‘news.’

The Opinion Page (29) has a half-page article on the shame of a Singaporean beauty pageant contestant’s terrible English.

On page ten we read that: Amet warns leaders not to mislead people on the PMIZ, by Jeffrey Elapa. Here we read again about the concerns from Madang’s Governor that people have signed a petition and led a peaceful rally at his offices. “He said there were better avenues to resort to in addressing the landowner issues and presenting petitions and staging protest marches on the street was not Madang’s way of solving problems.”

No, apparently Madang’s way is to roll over to foreign investors.

“Sir Arnold said that leaders should not mislead the people and not to use the children in such protest as they were not in a position to know what was right and wrong and, furthermore, it as a human rights abuse.”

Right next to this small piece is an ad by the Department of Environment and Conservation for consultants to assist in a review of PNG’s Draft Coral Triangle Initiative National Action Plan, which is plan covering coral reefs, fisheries and food security that involves PMG, Indonesia, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, the Philippines, and Malaysia.

Presumably the CTI National Action will be drafted by ‘marine conservation and fisheries’ consultants in such a way as to not disturb plans for major industrial clusterings in small island states, and will certainly not consult the landowners, local leaders or their women and children in this matter.

As a perfect counterpoint to the National’s page 10, the Post Courier offers:

AN OPEN LETTER TO ARNOLD AMET, GABRIEL KAPRIS & ANTON KULIT

We are writing in regards to the public demonstration AGAINST PMIZ held last Thursday (15 October) at the Government House in Madang. The purpose of that demonstration was to present to you a petition which expressed our STRONG OPPOSITION to the construction of the proposed Pacific Marin Industrial Zone (PMIZ).

For over one year now we have continually expressed our concerns about the project and for over one year now all we get is talk about how wonderful the project is, how many jobs are coming with it and on and on and on. Because you obviously don’t take our petition or our concerns seriously and because you don’t even think we are smart enough to organise a demonstration ourselves we would like to make some things very clear to you all.

The Petition

The petition expressed our OPPOSITION to the proposed PMIZ Project. That means we do NOT want it to proceed. Full stop. We do not want to hear you talk about all the benefits (we’ve heard all that before) nor do we want to hear about a process you have to involve everyone Mr. Amet. You are simply ignoring our concerns and making it seem as if the project is just going ahead. So you are trying to make us feel stupid for even objecting to a project which has serious flaws. In addition you know there has not been any proper consultation done with the communities. There has been no proper environmental study, there has been no proper social studies. The whole thing is being rammed down our throats. We would ask who’s pushing? We understand there are no decisions about this project being made in Madang. We know this is all being pushed from Port Moresby and all government officials in Madang are just doing what they are being told to do from Moresby. We get that. And we reject that and the Project. PMIZ should NOT go ahead.

The NGOs

You, once again, showed how you feel about us by claiming that some NGOs were behind this. That, of course, means that we are not capable of organising such an event. We don’t have the intelligence to get it all together. It means that we need outsiders to tell us how messed up our environment has been since RD Tuna has come to Madang. We can’t see for ourselves what’s happening to our saltwater, we can’t see for ourselves the social problems that have been brought by RD, we can’t see what’s happening to our women on the boats at RD, we can’t smell the continuous terrible smell from RD. We’re stupid. We need others to explain it.

So for the record let’s get something straight. We are NOT an NGO. We are village people full stop. We do have some support from NGOs and we are not hiding or ashamed of that. They tend to have a bit more respect for us than you do. We also have support from some church people, businesspeople and even some political people. But to just arrogantly brush the whole demonstration off as “NGOs are behind it” is both wrong and an attempt to talk down to us. We do not accept that. We are against the proposed PMIZ. We organized the petition. we signed the petitions and we organised the protest.

Then Mr. Amet to make things even worse - not only do you say NGOs are behind it you accuse them of using OUR women and children. You eve went as far to call it abuse. Are you serious? Let us be clear - we brought our women and children because they will be affected most if the stupid PMIZ project were to go ahead And as usual they would be the ones who suffer the most. They were there to express those concerns NOT being used by us or NGOs. Lastly on the issue of women being abused - how can you stand there and publicly say those things to us about our women being abused when we don’t hear any of you talk about the abuse - the REAL ABUSE - of our women on the boats of RD Tuna. When our women come to protest PMIZ they are being abused. But when our women are trading sex for fish there in nothing said. When they are being sexually harassed at the RD cannery plant - nothing is said. When our children present a petition they are being used. But when children are used at the “so-called ground breaking ceremony” of PMIZ they are NOT being used. We are NOT stupid Mr. Amet. By the way - we didn’t need the Churches or the NGOs to tell us this.

The Misinformation

I am sure you noticed there was no applause when you finished speaking Mr.Amet. While we were unhappy with what you had to say, we were NOT all surprised to hear what you had to say Mr. Kapris. And while we remained quiet during Mr. Amet’s talk we could not remain quiet as you spouted out more about how great the PMIZ Project was for everyone. That is why you heard constant negative comments thrown your way.

And again with the NGOs being “behind” this demonstration and again with the NGOs misleading the people with misinformation. Well there are no NGOs “behind” the demonstration. There are NGOs who support our position full stop. So let us ask you Mr. Kapris who is “behind” your strong support of a ridiculous project like PMIZ? Who are you working for? Not the people of this country and certainly not the people in Madang. So who’s tail are you? And if you say the government then we ask who’s wagging the government tail and we all know that. You’re doing the work for the Chinese. It is the Chinese who are “behind” PMIZ. It’s their project which just happens to be in PNG so they need someone to do their bidding for them and you and Mr. Somare and the government are more than happy to do that aren’t you?

Then you went on to say the most ridiculous statement coming from you guys the entire day. You said “PNG was 1,000 years behind in development. You heard our various responses to that didn’t you? What do you mean 1,000years behind in development? What is that suppose to mean? It means you don’t know what you’re talking about as we let you know. It means like every other politician you think you can just spout off anything you want because after all we’re just village people and we don’t know anything. Well you’re wrong. We aren’t stupid and we aren’t blind and we see what’s going on with this stupid project and we are opposed to it and to you for carrying out the wishes for yet another bunch of foreigners. Then you decided to lecture us on how the NGOs were giving us wrong information, how they were confusing us and not to listen to them - actually you told them to shut up. Well Mr. Kapris who is giving the wrong information on this project? Everyone knows the problems we have with RD Tuna up here. Having seven or ten (or whatever number you decide to throw out) more canneries is a joke. Why are we going ahead. Everyone knows what this means for the environment, to the fish stock, to the social problems. Everyone!

You claim there will be 30,000 jobs created. Do you mind telling us what jobs and how much they will pay and who will be working them? 30,000jobs - and where is the infrastructure for them, where is the water, the housing, the sanitation? You all have no plans. Your plan is to get money for yourselves at our expense. And talk about misinformation - the loan agreement with the Chinese does NOT allow non-Chinese companies to bid for the main contract Mr. Kapris. Why haven’t you said anything about that? Why haven’t you talked about who the real owners are behind the contracts “awarded” to local companies? Misinformation Mr. Kapris!!!!!! You are in no position to talk about such a thing with all the misinformation and non information your government is putting out about PMIZ.

In a full page advertisement in the Post Courier on December 11, 2008 we informed you “this is to notify all those involved with this ridiculous scheme that we will strongly oppose this PROPOSED PROJECT peacefully, respectfully and if need be legally from this day forward.” We have been peaceful and respectful even though that respect has NOT been returned. Our frustrations grow and for now we will pursue legal challenges to this monster called PMIZ.

Protest Organising Committee

Francis Gem (Chairperson) Frank Don

James Sungai Elizabeth K. Gem

Dolorose Lou Alfred Kaket

Hans Angmai Francis Sauna

* This ad was paid for by 167 individuals, 3 NGOs, 1 non-profit company, 6 business houses, 4 church groups and several politicians.

Then on page 23 of the National we find a letter from Dr Ralph Mana responding to the Director of PNG Forest Research Institute, Professor Simon Saulei, who has commented, after my own ad (that quotes a study by a biologist from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community) that global warming will directly effect our tuna stocks. Dr Mana begs to differ.  He says,

I am an animal physiologist. However, I can still say something about the forest in light of climate change because we are bombarded with information every day. Going back to tuna stock, as far as I know, there are no experiments done to test climate change impact on tune. All we know is tropical dwelling fish are now being seen and caught in temperate zones because of warmer sea waters which is expanding their habitat, thanks to climate changes….As intelligent creatures we can predict:

• Tuna fish will move towards the poles—northward and southward migration due to warmer central south Pacific Ocean;
• Water surface temperatures will not change despite higher surface temperature because of mixing of cold water bodies by oceanic circulation; and
• Fish will adapt to higher temperatures and their current habitat will be unaffacted by temperature change. This is how academics see the natural world.

Well, marine biologists now stand corrected.

And as if in a direct debate between the two papers, the National also has a page 19 ‘FOCUS’ article entitled, Poor countries bashed—again---that excoriates Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace, and WWF for trying to halt the galloping rate of land conversion (read: palm oil development, agribusiness and always, always LOGGING) in the developing world. It’s a zinger. Under the name of WorldGrowth, it uncovers the global conspiracy of conservation to [the horror!] prevent hardworking Indonesian peasants from supplying the world with luxury goods and German-language children’s books!:

 

 
 

From a distance, it looks like a campaign coordinated among environmental NGOs, aid donors and the World Bank is unfolding with the aim of pressuring tropical forest economies to commit at Copenhagen to cease conversion land to other uses. Generously-funded assistance from foundations and donors has materialized in the last year with offers to prepare low carbon emission plans for tropical forest developing countries from Guyana to Congo to Indonesia. …Indonesia has become a special target, as was apparently agreed at a meeting of global NGOs held earlier in the year to plan for Copenhagen. Indonesia has been tagged as the world’s third biggest emitter, all on the strength of very recent and weakly-based claims about the long-term impacts from peat lands in Indonesia…Environmental groups in Europe and the US have launched new action against forestry businesses in Indonesia. If they succeed, they are likely to harm the poor as they have in the past. The two campaigns—one by the US-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the other by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)—have picked two soft targets: the US fashion and luxury goods industry and children’s book publishing in Germany….The strategy is to pressure fashion and luxury goods companies to stop buying paper bags from a US-based supplier, Pak2000, because of its ties to Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) which is based in Indonesia….[And yet] It is also widely acknowledged that illegal logging in Indoensia is undertaken by smallholders, not the large companies. Id any illegal product has seeped into the chains of the large companies, it would be minute. It would seem, then, that the claims are bogus. WWF also makes much of the migration of publishing in Germany to Asia and the steady increase in imports of children’s books (and it could have said almost everything else) from China. Is there something automatically wrong with product from China? Is the problem that it is cheap? Parents would not think so. This is not the first time an environmental NGO has sought to link forestry with disreputable products and China. Greenpeace was criticized in the Malaysian media earlier in the year for expressing anti-Asian sentiment about the forest industry in the South Pacific, referring to Asian-owned forest businesses as “robber barons” and the Chinese industry as “sweatshops.” It began its anti-forestry campaign in the mid-90s in the South Pacific banging the anti-Asian drum. There are regular outbreaks odf anti-Asia rioting in the South Pacific. Some may find the WWF report equally unsavory. The cover features a cartoon with a little girls and teddy bear wielding chain saws in the forest and scaring the animals. This would alarm any child.

 
  
 

But finally, and leaving the best for last, Leader of the Opposition Sir Mekere Morauta has an ad that came out in both papers addressing the PM himself:

MORE Questions for PM on Carbon Trading

Since early August when I asked the Prime Minister a series of 20 questions regarding the Office of Climate Change and carbon trading deals, new information and documents have surfaced that raise even more questions about the dealings of the Prime Minister and his associates:

PRIME MINISTER:

1. Please explain why on the 12^th June 2008 you signed a certificate with Series Number A33,000,001 to A39,666,666 which gave Climate Assist (PNG) Ltd rights to 6,666,665 metric tones of carbon credits with a maturity date of 01 January 2012. [Here a scanned version of the certificate is represented]
2. What land does this certificate relate to and who owns the land?
3. Was this certificate used by Climate Assist to on-sell 1 million metric tones of carbon credits to Belben Energy Resource Group London for 20 US Dollars per metric tonne?
4. What are the specific details of the deal involving these A Series Certificates issued to Climate Assist, which were on-sold to a European consortium developing a methanol plant? According to Ted Price of Climate Assist, these certificates (and B and C Series certificates) were purchased from the Papua New Guinea Government.
5. How much did Climate Assist pay for these certificates and where is the money?
6. Did you in September 2008 sign Certificates with Series Numbers B1-B39 and C1-C39, each giving Climate Assist 39 metric tones of carbon credits?
7. What land do these certificates relate to and who owns that land?
8. How much did Climate Assist pay for these certificates and where is the money?
9. Where is the 200 million US dollars that the Government of Papua New Guinea accepted as payments from Climate Assist on 14^th June 2005 for 33 million metric tones of carbon credits?
10. What land did this transaction relate to and who owns that land?

Prime Minister, people want answers to these questions. We will persist until you give satisfactory answers.

We also want answers to the 20 questions I asked you previously. In case you have forgotten, I will ask again:

11. Did Minister Paul Tiensten make Climate Assist (PNG) Ltd the beneficiary of 33,333,333 million metric tones of carbon credits on 26^th July 2005, as evidenced by a certificate bearing his signature?
12. Did Minister Tiensten have your authority when he wrote to Climate Assist on 24^th October 2005 saying that you as Prime Minister and he had (quote) “accepted Climate Assist (PNG) Ltd to act as brokers on behalf of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea to buy and sell carbon credits” and that further, the Government (quote) “unconditionally guaranteed all actions undertaken for the monetization” of the carbon credits assigned to the company?
13. What expertise does Mr Greg Corby, the director of this one dollar company Climate Assist have to act as “broker” for the Government in carbon trading?
14. What did this stupendous volume of carbon credits assigned to Climate Assist translate into, in kina terms?
15. Did the Office of Climate Change (OCC) sign a memorandum last year with Climate Assist and another company called Earth Sky, whereby the companies would advance $10 million to OCC in return for the rights to sell $500 million carbon offsets?
16. What was to be the distribution of this $500 million? How much was to be kept by Climate Assist and Earth Sky, and how much by the Offic of Climate Change?
17. Did the Office of Climate Change authorize a Swiss-based broker, South Pole Carbon Asset Management, to market 1 million tones of avoided carbon dioxide emission per annum from a project in the East Sepik, April Salome?
18. What other companies are involved in the April Salome project and what rights have they been given?
19. What expertise does the South Australian company Carbon Planet or its director Mr Jim Johnson have to offer the Government?
20. How has the $1.2 million advanced last year to the Office of Climate Change by Carbon Planet been spent?
21. What conditions did this advance carry?
22. What commitments has the Government given to Carbon Planet in return for the $1.2 million advance?
23. Did the suspended Director of the Office of Climate Change give a mandate to a Hong Kong based company Forest Top and Nupan PNG to trade carbon while he was still Chief of Staff of the Office of Prime Minister?
24. What are the connections between Carbon Planet, Forest Top and Nupan PNG Corporation?
25. What expertise does Mr Kirk William Roberts of Nupan PNG have? He claims, quite fantastically, that he is currently (quote) “the most beneficial foreigner to PNG”!
26. Why is the Somare Government hawking to Mr Roberts carbon credits relating to Kumula Doso, when there is a court injunction in place restraining both the Office of Climate Change and the Lands Department from dealing in this land?
27. Where have the monies from Carbon Planet, Climate Assist, Earth Sky and other companies been paid—to Consolidated Revenue, to Occ, or to an array of individuals?
28. If the funds have not been paid to Consolidated Revenue, where are they and how are they being accounted?
29. What authority does OCC have to raise or to spend these funds?
30. Why is the Somare Government promoting, approving and receiving money from these deals, when it has not put in place any regulatory policy of legislation for carbon trading?

Prime Minister, the nation is waiting for answers to these 30 questions.

Is it not the height of hypocrisy for you to “falcon” around the world, advocating reduction in global carbon emissions, at the same time secretly selling the nation’s and peoples’ resources, and not accounting for the deals?

Mekere Morauta, KCMG MP

Leader of Opposition and Member for Moresby North-West

 

Those demon NGOs

A man who has just come in from the rain and dried his body and put on dry clothes is more reluctant to go out again than another who has been outdoors all the time. The trouble with our new nation was that none of us had been indoors long enough to be able to say ‘to hell with it.’ We had all been in the rain together until yesterday. Then a handful of us—the smart, and the lucky and hardly ever the best—had scrambled for the one shelter our former rulers left, and had taken it over and barricaded themselves in. And from within they sought to persuade the rest through numerous loudspeakers, that the first phase of the struggle had been won and that the next phase—the extension of our house—was even more important and called for new and original tactics; it required all argument to cease and the whole people to speak with one voice and that any more dissent and argument outside the door of the shelter would subvert and bring down the whole base.—Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, A Man of the People, 1966

 

Every move by the people of Madang to resist the PMIZ is not being met by noises about the ulterior motives of foreign ideologues and NGOs. No NGO organized the rally last week, and no NGO had to initiate the venom the Madang people brought to the table. Over the last week blogs, listservs and the National newspaper have carried vaguely conspiracy theory notions about NGOs thwarting development in PNG. I’d like to know what development has occurred in PNG WITHOUT an NGO. Having just spent some time in a beautiful corner of Simbu province, where people are defiantly proud of self-reliance and their own NGO efforts, I was struck by a picture of what PNG could be---a perfect mix of rural initiative and advanced technology---if only we had more NGOs.

So I decided to run through some of those nefarious anti development NGOs that work in PNG and which, I assume, some government officials would prefer to clear out to make room for more ExIm China bankrolled projects:

Adventist Development and Relief Agency Ambumange Appropriate Technology and Community development Institute Anglicare Stop AIDS Appropriate Technology Projects Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Bismark Ramu Group Bread for the World Christensen Fund Clinton Foundation Caritas Catholic Services Callan Services for the Disabled Center for Environmental Law and Community Rights ChildFund Papua New Guinea Clean Energy Solutions Conservation Melanesia Country Womens Association East New Britain Sosel Eksen Komiti East Sepik Council of Women Eco Forestry Forum Environmental Law Centre Family Voice Inc Foundation for Rural Development Foundation for the Peoples of Asia and the Pacific Fresh Produce Development Corp Friends Frangipani Greenpeace Habitat for Humanity HELP resources Individual Community Rights Advocacy Forum Japanese Overseas Co-operation Volunteers Kup Women for Peace

Lifeline PNG Liklik Dinau Abitore Trust Lutehran Development Services Melanesian Centre for Leadership Melanesian Womens Skill Bank Mercy Works Meri I Kirap Sapotim Milne Bay EcoForestry Association New Ireland Environment Monitoring and Awareness Committee New Zealand Voluntary Services Abroad Peace Corps Peace Melanesia People Against Childe Exploitation PNG Pacific Heritage Foundation Port Moresby City Mission Rainforest Action Network Research and Conservational Foundation Salvation Army Save the Children Susu Mamas South Pacific Appropriate Technology Foundation Transparency International The International Red Cross The Nature Conservancy UNDP UNESCO UNICEF UNIFEM Village Development Trust Voluntary Services Overseas/ CUSO WWF Wildlife Conservation Society Wok Meri World Vision PNG YWCA PNG

Whose future is at stake here?

Today only the National newspaper ran a story on yesterday’s rally. In it, the message from the Governor and the Minister for Trade and Industry is reported as being a demonization of foreign NGOs along with a patronizing rap on the hand to all protestors for bringing their women and children along—and thus engaging in a mild form of child abuse. They forgot to report that no one addressed the protestors claims and only lectured the crowd not to worry about the benefit sharing of the project. And, as the reporter was there on the ground, he forgot to note that the woman and children were obviously there of their own initiative (and represented a majority), as they are the front line of risk on this. How can tney hold the government accountable for abuse?.

 

 Protest zone
   Source:
   JEFFREY ELAPA
   Picture:
 
   MORE than 200 people staged a noisy march to the Madang provincial  government office to petition the Government to stop work on the  Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ). The PMIZ, at Vidar along the North Coast Road, is expected to be     one of the biggest tuna developments in the Asia-Pacific region and will employ more than 30,000 people. It will have 10 tuna factories  and processing facilities like the ones currently at RD Tuna     Canners, where fish will be processed and exported. However, the     people are protesting against the development because of concerns  
over the environmental and social impacts the project will have on  the people.They said environmental impact assessment reports  presented to them indicated that pollution would be a high concern   and their livelihood was likely to be affected because their  survival depended on the sea. Men, women and children sat in front  of the Madang provincial government building with placards that   read ‘No more PMIZ’, ‘We want our land back – think about our  future’, while others proclaimed ‘We do not want PMIZ – it will  destroy our sea’. Earlier, Governor Sir Arnold Amet had arranged a  meeting in the provincial assembly chambers for the group’s leaders  with Commerce and Industry Minister Gabriel Kapris, secretary for  Trade and Industry Anton Kulit and officers from the provincial  government to address their concerns and discuss some of the issues  surrounding the project. As soon as the Government leaders emerged, the people became  restless and started protesting loudly.  Many of the speakers voiced frustration over issues which they said     had been overlooked and never addressed by the Government.“Con  Government! Giaman Government! Shame on all those three men,” a    speaker said, referring to Governor Sir Arnold, Mr Kapris and Mr  Kulit. A young female spoke out angrily against Mr Kulit for “not doing   enough to address the needs and issues of the people as a local man”.  The protesters said that if the issues contained in the petition  were not addressed, then there would be no PMIZ project.  Among some of the demand contained in the petition are that a new impact area be established to include all the Bel tribe, that the  entire Bel area get 100% benefit, allocate new traditional   boundaries, pay compensation for damages, do an environmental  impact assessment, spin-off benefits to go to the Bel area and   float landowner equities. However, Sir Arnold and Mr Kapris, after learning that an NGO group  was behind the protest, said that outside people like NGOs should  not use the people to protest over the project.  “Outsiders should stop misleading the people.   “NGOs try to turn and twist things but please respect the     Government and educate them on what is right and wrong,” Mr Kapris    said.  Sir Arnold also warned the adults from using children in such     marches because it was a form of child abuse.   At one stage, a young boy who was told to carry the petition, burst     into tears when he was asked to talk.   The mother of the child, who was dressed in traditional attire,     came back with her son and confronted the governor, calling on him 
   to tell the boy what he was going to do to address their concerns.   Meanwhile, the two leaders told the protesters that they were     committed to addressing the issues and they would be meeting with 
   their local leaders to find solutions to the issues through dialogue.  Meanwhile, the cleaning work at Vidar has been forced to stop by    the disgruntled landowners.
 

We will not be New Guinea pigs

Today Madang people against the proposed Pacific Marine Industrial Zone assembled at the Provincial headquarter and presented petitions to the powers that be. 

 

 

As the rally began you could see people with mobile phones taking photos, and reporters from both papers, as well as a video camera from the Communications Department of Divine Word. But as I walked around taking these shots of placards, the head of Police CID walked out of the government building and came up to ask me who I was, and what NGO I was affiliated with. None, I said, I’m a private citizen. He asked whether I had organized the crowd. Me? I asked. Really---how could I organize this? All these people are here on their own initiative---just because I’m the white missus, doesn’t make me the mastermind. Ask them, I insisted. He smiled and said the big men inside want me not to take photos. I said Really? Everyone else seems to be doing this. But they’re authorized, he explained, and the Governor and the Minister for Trade and Industry don’t want the bad publicity really. I asked whether this wasn’t public land and I didn’t have a legal right to take photos. He agreed, hesitantly, and said this is what he’d been told to do: to ask me to stop taking photos. Then I said the only place these shots would possibly go was my web page. He said yes, that’s what they don’t want to see.

 

Hey Hey its step n fetchit

Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s reunion show featured a quintet of singers in blackface---very junglebunny blackface, with curly wigs and overpainted lips. Har har. Harry Connick Jr. happened to be on the show as a mock talent contest judge, and he walked off disgusted, saying he’d never been more offended in his life, and if the troupe dared to do the same in the States, they’d be killed. In response the show apparently found an old skit of Connick’s from the nineties where he’s singing with an African American southern preacher, dressed in identical robe and moustache and curly haired wig, but noticeably without his face boot polished.

 

 Tonight on the Channel 9 news, one of the reporters interviews a producer of the Hey Hey show and asks whether he thought, if they showed that skit to 100 people on the street, anyone would be offended. Well, the other white Australian says, maybe 10 % would be offended, and another 15% would say they feel like they should be offended, and the rest would say ‘Get over it.’

 

There wasn’t one person of color on the show, by the way (nor would there be on the sidewalk survey).

 

A couple of years ago I remember listening to one surfer dude tell another about traveling to America and how he was happy people in Australia didn’t have any of that racialism they have there.

 

In the same Channel 9 news report there’s a story of an old man whose bungalow is being adjoined by a major road. It’s a tragedy, too sorry for the reporter to even explain, and the camera follows the gent into his back lawn, across his patio furniture, to the four foot wall he’s constructed to block out the construction right next door. We’re told the householder of the little two bedroom bungalow with tidy wrap-around lawn now has no value---who would want to live here?  …..Well, I’m thinking: Me?. Or, maybe a Torres Strait Islander in public housing?  

 

It’s interesting to me that American media strives to hard for inclusion, and Australian not at all, it seems to pitch itself to the illusory mono-middle class.

 

When I first arrived in PNG, I remember watching Hill Street Blues with a Goroka family, and how impressed they were that there was a black Lieutenant on the show. Much later I remember watching She’s Gotta Have It, Spike Lee’s film, in Melbourne with a Hagen expat, who hated the film, and said it was too afro-centric, too angry to be a reflection of reality. Tonight Im watching Dreamgirls with my kids on TV, and pleased that for the four year old, especially, this is a film almost entirely without white faces.

Message from Madang

 

Just spent the morning in Sagalau, after a scramble from downtown Madang to the nearest and highest point inland. We began hearing tsunami warnings around 9 AM on the radio, and they continued to grow more specific about the Vanuatu earthquakes (2) and tsunamis expected in the Solomons, Bougainville (and Kieta did get big waves), along the north shore of PNG from Wewak to Madang, and even Port Moresby, scheduled at distinct intervals--11.20, 11.40 and so forth, according to modeling. Everyone had the latest images of Samoa in mind. From about 10.30 on most of Madang was on its cel phones to each other and throwing things into utes to move out. Our household has two cars, and we sent the kids (who had been let out from school) and pregnant daughter ahead with Bubu Jacob, the staff and I threw everything we could from the office into my truck, and took off, searching for one of the kids who'd not returned from school yet, then other friends, and finally joining the lone anxiously jam of cars leading out of town---noticing, I should add (and we called Roger Ha'ofa on the air to comment as much) plenty of big Pajeros and even diners racing by on the shoulders virtually empty but for drivers and one or two passengers, while crowds marched by like refugees on either side. People did stop here and there to pull up kids and old folk, but it really was a lifesaving drill most of Madang failed, I should say. We were all up the road some way before Roger H reported the warning had been cancelled, and we actually saw the flying foxes flying back into town (as confirmation). By the time we reached Sagalau and were sitting with friends, it had all become a picnic. Finally, back home and unpacking our gear I was rather impressed by my madness: Id pulled all my vital papers, yes, and old reports, and both big computers, plus lots of useless wires and connections; then I'd had the presence of mind to collect my favorite dresses and shoes, plus little else, and throw them into a laundry basket with some fruit, peanuts, the TV remote, and astonishingly, one onion. When all the dust had settled, we realized that we'd forgotten to check one daughter working in an office across town,  where her boss had remained at the desk, nonplussed, while she paced and waited for us outside.

 

I think we've got the procedure down now, for the next alert. I just have to remember our floaties.

Telling right from wrong Kongkong

When we tear our hair out over Chinese corruption these days, we need to be alittle more specific. Kongkong seems to refer to everyone who’s ‘ai slip’ these days, and for people who get touchy about being glommed together and stereotyped, this can be hypocritical.

It is common nowadays to hear people caveat the old Chinese when they slam the new. Not our Chinese, they say, but the new ones---they’re the enemy. We love our own Chinese, they’re our music business, our construction business, our supermarkets, and even our Members of Parliament. So many fled south when the kina dropped in the nineties, but they still have a romantic presence across PNG.

The Chinese have been in Papua New Guinea for over 120 years, and some of our most prominent citizens descend from this first wave. The Tams of Rabaul, the Paks and Chans of New Ireland, the Cheggs of Madang, the Kuis and Chows of Lae, the Seetos of Port Moresby, just to name a few, are all old guard Chinese PNG families, no longer in-married, they’re largely assimilated and in some cases hardly recognizable as Chinese at all.  

Thoday'e new Malaysian Chinese, for example, are the Rimbunan Hijau Group, and they’re from Malaysia, mainly Borneo (or Sarawak, for be specific) as well as Indonesia and Singapore. After fifteen years of Rimbunan Hijau’s strategic efflorescence in PNG, chain-sawing through forests everywhere, they now have a mosque and the largest private home in the Capital city. RH very strategically established a national newspaper (taking a page from classical colonialism), and opened retail stores in Port Moresby. Lest anyone doubt the power RH wields in high offices, you need only observe that every criticism of their logging operations attracts equally vehement defense from government quarters, usually reducing  critics to ‘NGO ideologues’ even as the international press is far more scathing than domestic reportage.

Then there are the new People Republic Chinese, an entirely different breed again. Suddenly these newcomers made RH interlopers look like indigenes, bringing in all their dubiously work-permitted troops at once. When the government of China broke ground on its Ramu-Nickel project in Madang, under a generous tax holiday and in a deal that allows them to retain the entire output of the mine, people finally began to balk. What RH could get away with in remote corners of remote provinces was one thing, but here open-cut mining and submarine tailing disposal without an environmental plan---and no consultation with the greater impact area of Madang---quickly brought Asian resentment to a head. What happened to our constitution?, people started to ask.  What about the laws of the land? Rhonda Nadile, a Labour Department executive, freely admitted that labour laws are circumvented at Ramu Nickel because of the project’s importance.

Some might say the Chinese are really ciphers for the growing anger at the national government, all the provincial and national leaders who’d obviously rolled over for the Ramu mine and lined their pockets for Chinese businesses in Moresby. While PNG workers at MCC were living in tents with open pit toilets, more than a few national politicians were enjoying new cars, homes and sweethearts earned by their compatriot’s sweat and tears.

The person who lost the most in the bargain was Sir Michael Somare, because for many in PNG, the Ramu Nickel dea, and the way he scoffed at anti-Chinese rioters as opportunists and complainers, was the last nail in the coffin of the Grand Chief’s reputation. What happened to that proud Melanesian statesman who refused to remove his shoes for the Australian Customs officials? He looks more like an old mandarin with bound feet these days.

 

The last wave of mainland Chinese are the riffraff who have come through the cracks, arriving as dependents or temporary businesspeople, and morphing into trade store operators, gamblers, club owners and market stall sellers everywhere. Before we get too sympathetic at these battlers in their kai bars, let’s recall that this group has also brought with them the Chinese Triads. Like smuggling Satan into Sunday school---we were wide open to this, and completely unprepared.

Back in 2005, a blogger called ‘Merchant’ on a Chinese-community web site explained Port Moresby to another Singaporean Chinese who was interested in coming to work in Port Moresby.

[T]here is a small Singaporean community [in Port Moresby]. Many are in fact Malaysians with Singapore company credentials…The local Towkay is someone called Ting Tan who owns a chain of department stores and comes originally from a place called Kelang in Malaysia. He is localised having already married locally. His shops may be a starting point for you. The People at Rimbunan Hijau who constantly eat at a place called Fu Gui (a Chinese stall type restaurant) could be the other point of call… The Yacht club is perhaps a good place to meet some of the international community. But even there the Whites tend to keep aloof and to themselves whilst the Chinese are compelled to do the same to an extent.

But more telling than this description of ethnic enclaves is the advice he has for the prospective Moresbyite:

You should have a car as public transport is not only dangerous but also unreliable and virtually non existent to civilized standards. A maid is something you will have to sort out once there. They too have to be checked out. They are patently inefficient, averse to work and dishonest. I know it sounds terribly racist and alarmist but that’s a fact and don't wait to experience it before having to learn.

Fortunately, a few other Port Moresby-based Chinese voiced disapproval at his assessments, and one pointed response came from a respondent called ‘Meriasples’:

Merchant, if you are so negative and racist, I wonder why you came to PNG? To make money, as a businessman or through the "high risk allowance" you asked from you employer?

This is the heart of PNG’s simmering unrest: to be called uncivilized, lazy and dishonest by people who appear to have arrived illegally, assume Papua New Guineans are an easy touch, and are earning ‘hardship pay’ to live at the highest echelons of Port Moresby society.

Another blogger, elsewhere, tells a different story:

I was going through the immigration at Cairns in  2004 as a Chinese about my age presented with a PNG Passport. He was  asked to provide alternative identity like a birth certificate he  refused exclaiming that he was a Papua New Guinean. So the female  officer asked him where he was born because his passport had been  issued post Independence. The guy became quite angry say he would not  answer her, so she held the passport for me to see and asked if I  could pronounce the birthplace which was Lombrom, but they guy could  not say where he was born or where Lombrom was and in a rage he turned  at me and said that I could not tell him where the place was. I just  smirked and said Manus Is. The chap flew off the handle and they  called the Police in and locked him in the detention area, the lass  thanked me for my co-operation, but I was quietly pleased that he had  been caught out and there needs to be more of it in PNG.

The old and new Chinese have generally separate orbits, although some bleed between new Singaporeans and old Chinese can be found every evening at the Golden Bowl in Port Moresby, for example, where friends and relatives share noodles and Cantonese gossip about what they all have in common: Brisbane.

Then last year the news arrive like an epidemic: the mafia were amongst us. The new Chinese, far form being economic refugees, were predatory imperialists, PNG’s brand new cash economy suddenly their manifest destiny. Media reports from the Solomons tipped us off that Chinese mafia there had arrived from Port Moresby, where they were running a prostitution ring that serviced (guess what?) Malaysian logging camps.

Asian prostitution is nothing new, and not restricted to the Chinese. PNG politicians have been caught importing Indonesian girls in from Vanimo, and a thriving sex trade at Filipino tuna boats has been operating for years now.

In November last year 104 illegal Chinese mine workers were arrested in immigration and labour raids. At the end of the year, a minister in the Solomon Islands, Clement Rojumana, was arrested over his alleged role in the corrupt granting of citizenship certificates to Chinese.  In Fiji it is estimated that 7000 illegal Chinese had entered in the past two years---a number surpassed only by PNG, where some estimates say there are 20,000 mainland, Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean Chinese in residence.

 

This year The Melbourne Age told us these Triads had infiltrated and corrupted the highest levels of PNG’s police force. Sixteen senior PNG policemen were implicated with Chinese residents in PNG on charges of people smuggling, money laundering, prostitution, illegal gambling, fraud and theft. It appeared that PNG might be used as stop-over point in smuggling Chinese to Australia. Then Ben Kimisopa himself was quoted as saying: “Chinese mafia have bought off officials throughout the system...they are operating illegal businesses, they are siphoning money out, corrupting government officials, colluding with police and making attempts to kill officials as well.”

One Police Officer told AAP reporter Ilya Gridneff that the Chinese presence is in the force is all-pervasive. “It’s not just the police but everywhere along the chain, if they weren’t able to get in, then police wouldn’t be able to take their bribes,” he said. “If it is this bad now, imagine in five years time.”

But again, they cannot be painted with one brush. Gridneff gives us the Hollywood twist to the tale of the Chinese mafia:

A former Chinese dissident gets deported and growing anti-Chinese violence breaks out while the power of the local Asian mafia rises amid claims of widespread police corruption. It sounds like a plot for a Hollywood action thriller, but it’s just a slice of everyday life in Papua New Guinea. The opening scenes would show former Chinese government dissident Gu Kai being forced awake from his sleep and taken from his Port Moresby home, beaten by police, blindfolded, then taken hostage and driven to the outskirts of town. In a hotel room he is beaten again, forced to sign affidavits accusing the PNG police commissioner of corruption and when he refuses, the beatings continue. Next morning police and immigration department officials take the luggage-less, passport-less, battered and bruised man to the airport and deport him to Hong Kong. Allegations arise that behind the deportation is a mysterious mainland Chinese woman who was previously deported for alleged Asian mafia dealings. The plot thickens as it reveals some Chinese businesses may have financially contributed to the “operational costs” involved for those police to expel Gu Kai. Gu Kai was not just one of the thousands of “new Chinese” suspected of illegally living and working in PNG, he was also a vocal critic and vehement campaigner against corruption and alleged Chinese businesses’ illegal activities and illegal workers. And he was believed to be a police, tax office and National Intelligence Organisation informant. But other PNG officials say Gu Kai was simply protecting his own illegal interests, speaking out to stifle his competition.

Chief Superintendent Sam Bonner, the Police force’s legal officer, is said to have  perverted the course of justice last year by interfering with an investigation into illegal gambling in Port Moresby. Mr Bonner tried to halt a raid on a venue housing pokie-like horse-racing machines owned by alleged crime figure Albert Khoo, who was said to have at least four police on his payroll.

National Gaming Board chairman Nat Koleala told The Melbourne Age that gangs had placed a $700,000 contract on his head for speaking out against illegal gaming. After several bomb threats, a hand grenade was thrown at the house of his registrar.

But even we were to ferret out the Triads, we’d still be left with the Chinese government. The developing world has welcomes China’s sales pitch of easy credit and no structural reform strings attached. As a result, there are new roads, power plants and telecommunications networks across Africa, all financed by low-interest loans from the Chinese government’s Exim Bank.

Increasingly, though, this deal seems to come with its own catch. Sharon LaFraniere and John Grobler of The New York Times tell us, 

China’s aid must be used to buy goods or services from companies, many of them state-controlled, that Chinese officials select themselves. Competitive bidding by the borrowing nation is discouraged, and China pulls a veil over vital data like project costs, loan terms and repayment conditions. Even the dollar amount of loans offered as foreign aid is treated as a state secret. Anticorruption crusaders complain that secrecy invites corruption, and that corruption debases foreign assistance.

“China is using this financing to buy the loyalty of the political elite,” said Harry Roque, a University of the Philippines law professor who is challenging the legality of Chinese-financed projects in the Philippines. “It is a very effective tool of soft diplomacy. But it is bad for the citizens who have to repay these loans for graft-ridden contracts.”

In fact, such secrecy runs counter to international norms for foreign assistance. In a part of the world prone to corruption and poor governance, it also raises questions about who actually benefits from China’s projects. The answers, international development specialists say, are hidden from public view.

…“Our enterprises must conform to international rules when running business, must be open and transparent, should go through a bidding process for big projects and forbid inappropriate deals and reject corruption and kickbacks,” Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, told a group of Chinese businessmen in Zambia in 2006.

But China has no specific law against bribing foreign officials…

 

It is too simplistic to say that this Look East trend is an ideological flick of the head away from looking South. It’s really about greed, and arguably about the last days of an elder statesman anxious to leave his stamp across the country before retiring to soft pillows and foot bathes for the rest of his days. Forests are being recklessly logged, feeder roads cutting swathes bigger than interstate highways just to reach areas that will harvest more hardwood, in the name of palm oil, resource extraction and a hasty idea of ‘urbanization’---which appears to be constituted of little more than noodle stalls and knick knack stores, with no plumbing or waste disposal plans. As one Globe and Mail reporter recently described it:

Chinese engineers landed in Papua New Guinea in 2006 to inspect their latest mineral acquisition, they faced an arduous journey through the tropical wilderness. They drove over crumbling roads to the Ramu River, then found natives with dugout canoes to paddle them upstream. Next, they hired another team of locals with machetes to slash a rough trail for eight hours through the steamy jungle, dodging poisonous snakes and malaria-carrying mosquitoes. “It was terrible,” recalls Wang Chun, the chief engineer. “You couldn’t breathe.” Today, less than three years later, a series of small Chinatowns has emerged in the jungle — complete with Chinese food, Chinese satellite television channels and crews of Chinese migrant labourers living in cheap
dormitory huts. Were once was wilderness, you find the workers of China Metallurgical Group Corp., toiling seven days a week and chattering about their families back home in Beijing and Sichuan. It hasn’t been easy.

It certainly hasn’t.

But I have to say, in conclusion, that we’re bringing some of this on ourselves. EMTV tonight reported that the new parliamentary commission established to explore the causes of anti-Asian violence has pushed back its hearings until November, largely for lack of travel pays. So they’re asking for K3 million to get the job done. Tell me, have we been so spoiled by handouts that our MPs cannot travel affordably any longer? Hotel rooms, hire cars, per diems and big meals—all to listen to the grassroots’ complaints. These are the prospective clientele of RH’s big hotel-casino complex now breaking ground in Port Moresby. They are hardly likely to hear the real causes of anti-Asian ire.

Poverty? But my friends and family are doing so well!

 

    PNG poverty: Somare shifts the blame
 by Laurence Chandy - 1 October 2009 3:57PM
 Laurence Chandy is a Research Associate at the Wolfensohn Center   for Development at Brookings.
 Al Jazeera's illuminating interview with PNG Prime Minister  Michael Somare highlights many of the misconceptions which   undermine the government's approach to development. Repeating his earlier mantra, Somare denied that poverty was a    problem in PNG, with the possible exception of urban migrants.   The  truth is that poverty by any standard measure remains rife.  My back  of the envelope estimate, as appears in my new Lowy   Analysis, has  extreme poverty (defined by the international   poverty line of $1 a  day) at more than 30% in 2008 – that's a   higher percentage than in  1996 when the last completed household   survey was undertaken.Furthermore, poverty is certainly not limited to cities. Not   only  is the incidence of poverty higher in rural areas, the   rural poor  are found further below the poverty line than their   urban  counterparts and experience lower growth rates. The Prime   Minister  might consider taking a leaf out of Emperor Haile  Selassie's  eccentric, if ultimately doomed policy of arranging   surprise visits  out of the capital to understand better what is   happening in his  country. Somare's views on urban migrants are generally unsympathetic. He    blames them for the recent unrest against Chinese businesses and   criticises them for migrating in the first place. I would argue  that migratory trends, while difficult to manage, perform an   important role. Eradicating poverty in PNG relies on the   connection  between the poor and the rest of the economy being   improved. At  present, this connection is weak, which explains   why the 'poverty  dividend' from economic growth is so low. On  current trends, the  most likely solution to Papua New Guinea's   rural poverty will come  not from the government's extension of  public services and economic  opportunity into remote areas, but   from the poor moving to more  prosperous areas. To coin a phrase:   if you can't bring the economy  to the poor, bring the poor to   the economy. The Prime Minister's answers are weakest on the issue of   government effectiveness. He is unable to explain why public funding doesn't  reach its intended target, other than to blame  corruption among  public servants, while absolving the political   class of any wrong- doing. The real explanation here is the   scandalous absence of  monitoring and accountability mechanisms,   a reliance on defunct  service delivery systems, and the need for  much greater budgetary  focus. Given that the bulk of district-  level expenditure is  overseen by politicians and that no effort is made to account for  these funds, politicians are undoubtedly   part of problem.  With a  decision on the LNG project just around   the corner, and the  prospect of rapid growth and booming   revenues a distinct  possibility, now is the time for the   government to face up to the  country's poverty problem and to   think seriously about the role it  must play in ensuring the   expanding economy delivers for the poor.

We wish to welcome you to P.N.G.

 

 

I do love this shot of Betha and her Dad, Grand Chief Sir Short of Stature, looking  Lilliputian  beside the mythic Obamas. And today Bob Browne, as always, has the answer-- platform shoes! So, in the spirit of Grassroots, I propose a few fashion tips here, from the elfin to the Venetian chopine, just to bring the wee Murik man up to the stature of those Americans. Betha can wear flats.  Or clogs.

 

 

Meanwhile, the Huli are pissed off. And who could blame them? The PNG witchdoctor image is of none other than  Paija, the renowned DUNA [not Huli] snakeoil salesman and proud owner of the Tagali Valley vagina-and-skul cave, seen above ( but don't tell the Tea Party).  I have enjoyed more than one of his marila potions, and even enjoyed the way they backfired, but never more than the time my father came to visit and we downed an entire bamboo each of Paija's youth and health tonic, which left him invigorated and me clawing the tiles on the bathroom floor through the night.

 

 

Emmanuel Narokobi’s wonderful Masalai blog is filled with umbrage from Southern Highlanders about their besmirched dignity and the reverence with which we must hold all images of Huli culture:

 

Understand it like this.
Your wife or sister gets raped by an influential person. You fronted him up and ask for mega sum compensation money or whatever for the rape. Another Joe Blow rapes the same person again….and I know what you’ll do…go after compensation again.

Get away from getting things murky. Let’s think straight.

A dignified culture has been RAPED, PROSITUTED, DISRESPECTED, and made to be something it’s clearly not – a plaything. That dress culture is revered and is an honorable thing.

Stand up and demand a firm apology.
Let it be recorded for now and the generations to come. Let the world know that, this thing cannot and must never be messed around like that. It’s about Papua New Guinea’s identity in the global context….not an isolated Huli culture only.

...Hopefully, the Ambassador Ivan Paki will do something in America about this cos he is a Hela Opena, son of Hela…

Iaro ma catch mulai na varmari piram.

 

 

Let's see, the last time I saw Paija, maybe four years ago, he was walking through the Tari market, one of the few places in PNG where platform shoes are never out of style (along with wrapaaround sunglasses). But Paija was in arse tanget and otherwise unadorned. No wig, no pigs tusks, just a bandaged hand: I believe he was missing a finger. He'd just been to the Tari Haus Sik to see his second wife, a beautiful teenage girl --always considered firm proof of the power of his love magic. He'd had his hand bandged; and she was recovering from the other effects of their domestic quarrel, deep axe wounds over her face and neck.

 

I wonder if she got an apology.

There's money in priate hunting! (Bring me the head of Johnny Depp)

 

An interesting ending to the piece I wrote in response to Pokajam might touch on the news item I just received from the Pacific Islands Fish Forum Agency, reporting a USD$1 million fine levied against illegal Chinese fishing boats (flagged in Vanuatu) found in Kiribati's waters----a successful monitoring effort that results in heaps more money than anyone might have expected. Shouldn't this be where PNG puts its efforts, its investments? In conserving the tuna, and policing the stock, we could surely make a few million here.

 

 

FFA MEMBER NEWS

Kiribati fines ship $1 million USD following Operation Kurukuru

BETIO, KIRIBATI, 23 SEPTEMBER 2009: The High Court of Kiribati today fined the owner and master of a foreign fishing vessel a total of USD $1 million  for fishing in Kiribati waters without a licence.

The fine came as the High Court handed down its judgment on the prosecution by Kiribati Attorney General of Chung Ching Fu and Sung Hui Ocean Company Ltd, master and owner respectively, of the Vanuatu flagged, longline fishing vessel Sung Hui.

On 24 August 2009, the Sung Hui was intercepted and boarded by police officers from the Kiribati Pacific Patrol Boat RKS TEANOAI inside the Kiribati Economic Exclusion Zone.  RKS TEANOAI was just one of a number of patrol boats participating in Operation KuruKuru 2009 and had been alerted to the presence of the Sung Hui through the combined regional surveillance effort of the FFA member countries, the United States and France.  A preliminary investigation showed that the vessel had been engaged in illegal fishing activity and was apprehended and taken back to port where it was placed under arrest.

In court, the master and owners of the Sung Hui pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful entry, two counts of unlawful fishing within the Kiribati fishery limits and one count of failing to have the vessel’s fishing gear stowed.  Fines of A$1,140,000 (USD $993,083 ) were imposed and the company was also charged for the costs involved in the apprehension of the vessel, paying a further A$33,742 (USD $29,392) .  The forfeiture of the fishing vessel was also an option considered by the court but it was decided on this occasion to allow the vessel to proceed.  

This apprehension and the penalties imposed show the financial benefits of pursuing the masters and owners of vessels which continue to flout international and national fisheries laws.  It also demonstrates that the newly formed Regional Fisheries Surveillance centre at the FFA in Honiara is successfully supporting and complementing the regional monitoring, control and surveillance effort of the member countries and other surveillance providers.  

The decision comes as a warning that any foreign fishing vessel considering fishing illegally inside Pacific Island Economic Exclusion Zones in the future should be aware that their chances of being caught and prosecuted are high.

 

Searching for vision on the 20-20 tuna belt

Monday Sylvester Pokajam, MD of the National Fisheries Authority, took out a full page ad in the National newspaper to express some of his opinions about me. I quote:

“We refer to the recent publications by certain experts and more particularly a Ms Nancy Sullivan who ridiculed PNG and Pacific Island Countries management of tuna fishery in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean as well as highly critical of the 2009 Pacific Tuna Forum.

Ms Sullivan stated in a recent publication that “Half the tuna of the world comes from here. Virtually none of the conservation initiatives do.” Clearly, people like Ms Sullivan are running hidden agenda or simply lack any understanding of issues and challenges in international tuna management and success achieved by Papua New Guinea and the membership of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA).

It also shows that Ms Sullivan and her associates no not want the world to know the following facts:

1. Of all the oceans in the world, the Western ad Central Pacific Ocean tuna fishery is still the best managed.
2. PNG and other members of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) has been instrumental in setting up tuna management within the respective EEZs through the adoption of Palau Arrangement [sic] in 1995 that sets out a limit on the number of purse seine vessels that fish in their waters to 205 vessels.
3. The PNA in 2007 adopted the Vessel Day Scheme which ensure [sic] managing purse seine tuna fishing by fishing effort or vessel days…
4. The PNG in 2008 adopted what is known as the Third Implementing Arrangement (3IA) which will be implemented commencing on 1 January 2010 [sic] measures in the 3iA are as follows [sic]:

(i)   Catch retention---retain all smaller bigeye and yellow fin catches on board purse seine vessels….

(ii)     3 months FAD closure (July to August) [sic] with exceptions…

(iii)    Closure of two high seas pockets to all fishing vessels during validity of license issued by a Party.

(iv)   100% observer coverage on foreign purse seine vessels.

(v)     A fishing vessel’s MTU (Automatic Location Communicator) to be switched on at all times during validity of a license by a Party.

These measures are he [sic] most stringent tuna management measures in the world.

…

Should Ms Sullivan want to address issues of over fishing and suggest new approached to managing tune then she should consider relocating back to the Atlantic.

Ms Sullivan and her associates were also critical of the recent Pacific Tuna Forum. It would be interesting to see why certain groups do not want the Pacific to attain the maximum returns from the sustainable fishing of tuna resources within the EEZs. It seems that people like Ms Sullivan prefer to maintain the status quo—The Pacific get [sic] only an access fee or resource rent and all the value-adding or processing be done in Asia, America or Europe…

Some statements expressed by Ms Sullivan and he [sic] associates on the Pacific marine Industrial Zone only creating low paid, low skill jobs and as such not important for PNG [sic] devalues contribution [sic] of the simple PNG cannery worker.

Etc etc etc. It goes on. Tiff Nonggorr’s comment on my blog about the Tuna Forum made an interesting point about this ad, suggesting it may have been written by Pete Celso of RD Tuna rather than Pokajam himself. It is hard to know, from the sheer number of malaprops, whether the MD himself or any other English as a second language speaker stands behind it.

Nevertheless, I put a response together today that I thought I’d print myself this week. Overlooking the idea that cannery workers are ‘simple’ or that my agenda might be hidden, or even that I wish to see PNG only get resource rents for our tuna, I decided to focus on the more important points Pokajam wanted to make.

A CALL FOR 20-20 VISION ON OUR 20-20 TUNA BELT

Nancy Sullivan

I wish to thank Mr. Pokajam of the National Fisheries Authority for taking the time to read my blog (www.nancysullivan.typepad.com) and respond at length in a full-page advertisement in Monday September 28^th’s National newspaper (p. 30).

It was my company that conducted the 2002 RD Tuna Report (Tinpis Maror) and has since conducted a social assessment of South Seas Tuna in Wewak, a review of the European Union’s Rural Coastal Fisheries Project in Madang, and the 2008 Gender Issues in Tuna Fisheries Report for the Secretariat of Pacific Community for PNG, Kiribati and Fiji. We are not professional critics, are paid nothing for our opinions on the proposed PMIZ, and remain enthusiastic cheerleaders of equable and sustainable development in PNG, especially in fisheries.

However, I am not a fisheries expert nor do I presume to have all the facts regarding the proposed PMIZ in Madang. In fact, I worry that too few of us do. What I do have, however, is a deep and abiding respect for my adopted home town, Madang, and for the quality of life they have sustained since Independence, largely due to the presence of a steady tourism industry, and the natural advantages of Madang’s brilliant Lagoon.

In response to Mr Pokajam’s defense of Papua New Guinea’s conservation efforts in tuna management, I must point out that all the initiatives he mentions are regional ones, jointly embarked upon with FSM, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Kiribati, Solomons and Tuvalu---the Partners to the Nauru Agreement or PNA, or the larger members of the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.

Papua New Guinea is the country most advantageously placed within the twenty-twenty north-south latitude of the Pacific Ocean’s ‘Tuna Belt,’ and has always been the last beneficiary of this rich offshore resource. As a result we have invited foreign investment in locally-based purse seine fisheries and encouraged them to develop onshore processing plants to reap more of the revenues from tuna than the fishing access fees alone. This is the world’s most beloved fish food and we need to take advantage of that.  No one would argue that this is unwise economics. But in the face of a rapidly depleting tuna stock, now that a ban on Atlantic tuna has been imposed, PNG is also the last hope for the sustainability of this resource even as it becomes the most coveted supplier to the world markets.

The responsibility to preserve this resource for the future is now upon us, not simply the PNA or the WCPFC countries. Most importantly, we know that foreign vessels are illegally fishing in our waters every day, and that this pressure can only build as the tuna stock diminishes. If we can look beyond the best intentions of our regional agreements, and beyond the initiative that will only take effect next year or 2012, look through the rhetoric and promises to acknowledge how little enforcement ever takes place, and how minimally foreign companies abide by the few environmental, social and hygienic standards imposed by our government, we should all be able to see how urgent the need is to act conservatively, and to act now. There is far too much empty promise-making in the tuna industry.

Mr Pokajam mentions PNG’s Vessel Day Scheme, the Monitoring System, and the Fisheries Observers we’ve trained. It should be pointed out, however, that the fishing vessel’s Automatic Location Monitors can be turned off at any time, and without any consequence, while vessels fish freely just outside our EEZ, in the Pacific Commons zones between PNG and FSM and Nauru. These are free-for-all zones at present, the structural equivalent of large punctures in a tight hull, leaking tuna to pirates from China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Spain every day.

Last year at this time Greenpeace caught Filipino and Taiwanese vessels illegally transshipping from one of these high seas pockets just outside our waters, and all of the four vessels had their Automatic Communication Locators turned off at the time.

Conversations with the Captain of one vessels revealed that the ship had conducted six separate transhipments with other vessels from the same fleets, in the past month, all in the high seas pocket north of Papua New Guinea---a zone declared a no-fishing zone by the surrounding coastal states in May 2008 by the PNA.

An Oxfam report recently pointed out some of the problems in our sophisticated monitoring systems (Oxfam, Fishing for a Future, 2006, p 6):

    • The Vessel Monitoring System does not always provide real-time updates to countries in whose waters vessels are fishing.

    • There is a lack of reliable observation coverage, especially when agreements allow boat owners to default on embarking an observer through a small compensation payment.

    • There can be poor training of observers, and the independence of observers can be compromised by their nationality (if they are from the DWFN rather than the coastal state), or if they are directly paid by the ship-owner.

    • There are problems with altered and inaccurate logbooks.

    • The transhipment of catches at sea can escape monitoring.

• At times payment of a fee allows avoidance of local landing provisions. 

In 2004, Greenpeace estimated that, “based on arrests in the last five years, the majority of vessels caught fishing illegally in the [Pacific] region are from China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Korea,”’ but no fishing nation has a perfect compliance record, not even EU members. (Greenpeace, Development without Destruction: Towards Sustainable Pacific Fisheries, 2004, p. 7)

The EU itself admits that much data is “entirely absent for certain activities in waters where EU agreements with third parties have been concluded.” (European Commission, Report from the Commission on the monitoring of the member states’ implementation of the common fisheries policy 2000-2002, Jan 2005.)

In addition, EU vessels have been known to re-flag their vessels with other ‘flags of convenience’ in order to avoid their home-country’s regulations (Oxfam, Fishing for a Future, 2006, p 6)—a precedent that bodes very poorly for the Pacific.

“The fishing pressure on stocks in the Pacific Commons as witnessed by Greenpeace demonstrates the highly unregulated nature of these Pacific Commons and, away from the watchful eyes of authorities, the continued pillage of the region’s already troubled bigeye, yellowfin and other highly migratory fish stocks.”  (Greenpeace, Plundering the Pacific, How transshipping at sea by Philippine fleets facilitates the launder and plunder of Central and Western Pacific tuna, 2008, p2)

Finally, it is difficult to know how the terms of the PNA’s Third Implementing Arrangement (3IA), scheduled to take effect in 2010, are to be policed. Itemizing “100% observer coverage on foreign purse seine vessels” is much like saying “banning illegal transshipments in high seas pockets.” 

Mr Pokajam says that an MOA is in place with the PNG Defense Force Maritime Element since 2002 “that provided [sic] for 10 dedicated patrols throughout EEZ every year,” and I am pleased to learn this. But can we see the proof and published results of these patrols? Why does the Greenpeace Esperanza have to tell us what is going on before our own Defense Force?

We need to start speaking in realistic terms about what is really happening to our tuna.

I would suggest we also start talking in real terms about the impact of processing plants on a local environment---physically, hygienically, socially, and environmentally. Those of us in Madang who have lived through the initial problems of RD Tuna, which included reckless waste disposal and persistent fumes, are certainly pleased to see RD acting more responsibly of late. But this does not allow us to overlook the collateral damage of having a cannery in our back yard: the sex for fish trade on the boats, the smuggling of Filipino liquor and cigarettes, the industrial noise, the rise of human effluence readings in Madang Lagoon measured by WWF, and the overfishing inevitable in purse seine netting.

But time has also given us more perspective on the so called development advantages of the cannery, and after many of the promised spin-off businesses were reclaimed by the company itself, the benefits to the local economy are largely restricted to the wages they pay. K80/ fortnight (exclusive of housing) is the country’s minimum wage (although they once received barely K40/week---and one worker showed us his fortnightly pay of K1, after all the deductions RD used to take). For a young woman to feed a family on this income she would also have to depend upon family gardens and coastal fishing to make ends meet, neither of which are viable options for most of the landowners around the plant, much less for the migrants who have come to settle. These pay packets generally just cover the grooming and secondhand clothing needs of the young women, and certainly not the school fees or weekly rice bags of their families.

We understand that RD is abiding by wage minimums set by the government itself, and that it has become significantly cleaner and more transparent since its first years here. But those who do spend their pay packets in town are handing their meager incomes over to foreign-owned shops, the majority of whose profits go right offshore again. 

At the same time, RD and all the downstream processing industries projected to cluster in Vidar Wharf new Industrial Zone enjoy tax havens that are the envy of every PNG entrepreneur. Tell me again how the country’s economy benefits?

What everyone wants is equable development, for tuna fishing and processing to be PNG owned and operated, perhaps like PafCo in Fiji. Let PNG control its own resources. Then oldest fishermen and women in the world are surely capable of running a purse seine fleet---and they’re better off monitoring their vessels than foreign ones. Let PNG catch and add value to its own stock, rather than allowing every other developing nation set up industrial slums on our shores, only to spoil our waters, our daughters and our futures.

We call on the NFA to look beyond the lucrative access rents, beyond the free junkets to Mindanao, beyond personal careers, to what is really being planned for Madang, and for the limited tuna resources we still have. Once we enter into the regional free for all to get as much back as quickly as possible from this precious reserve, we will be forfeiting our own national interests, our tourism industry and the livelihoods of thousands in Madang, to an outdated notion of development where factory work seems the only stepping stone to fisheries industry employment.  

Finally, and not least, I return to the responsibility Papua New Guinea has in conserving these very precious tuna stocks. Johann Bell of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community closed the Tuna Forum with what may have been the most important of all discussions, about global warming. “The possible effects of climate change on tuna need to be taken seriously,” he warned us all. The following diagrams show how far east from PNG the convergence zone that feeds skipjack stocks are projected to range by 2050. It won’t be long now before the best tuna stocks may be found in Polynesia, not PNG.  This says a lot about the scramble for profits we are experiencing right now—‘a get it while we can’ strategy that could endanger this resource for the entire South Pacific.

“Alterations to water temperature and currents, and the food chains that support tuna, are projected to affect the location and abundance of tuna species. Preliminary models indicate that the concentrations of skipjack tuna, for example, are likely to be located further to the east than in the past. This has implications for the long-term development and profitability of national industrial fishing fleets and canneries in the western Pacific…Fleets will need to be upgraded to increase the safety of fishing operations as more severe storms occur. When these costs are combined with loss of days at sea due to bad weather, and higher fuel costs, the profitability of national enterprises could be jeopardized.” (Secretariat of the Pacific Community Policy Brief 5/2008, p 2).

Let me finally be perfectly clear about what Mr. Pokajam refers to as my “hidden agenda” ---or what might better be called my vested interests in the issue of the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone in Madang Province. I live and work in Madang. As a Member of the Madang Chamber of Commerce, an anthropologist and 22 year resident in Papua New Guinea, with children, grandchildren, a partner, and a private anthropological consulting company, I’d be the first to admit a lack of impartiality on the issue. My personal and professional futures are at stake.

Martyrs, stigmata, golden chalises and weeping sores

I woke to the 7 AM peels of the church bells on Sunday Sept 20, while working on a project about vulnerable children in Mingende, Simbu. Semmed like a good idea to go to Mass. Peels again at 8, and most of the people milling about outside the old clapboard church started moving inside, where a guitar group sitting in the midsection of the pews was already singing hymns. By 8.30 the pews were filling, and the welcome prayers begin by the catechist Peter. Then the Village Court Magistrate made his announcements from the pulpit, followed by a woman’s group leader.  The priest had just arrived back after two months’ holiday back home in India. He spoke about what people back home thought he’s accomplished in Mingende in the two years he’d been there. People here used to talk a lot and work very little, he explained, but now he sees them work a lot and talk very little.

The music was lovely, the kids very well behaved, and the faces (especially those lined up to receive communion, where I could see them more clearly) were extraordinary, some of the oldest and smallest physiques of New Guinea. When the Elders came around to collect the offering, distributing heavy cloth pouches on sticks down each row, I was struck at how short they all were---all of then under five feet, each face more hard-worn and severe than the next. They rolled up the pouches and placed them on a plate to hand to a beautiful young altar girl, not much shorter than them, in an ivory smock and Kelly green cape, her hair expertly cornrolled for the occasion. 

Lots of the kids in happily mismatched clothes, t shirts or flannel shirts beneath spaghetti strapped nylon frocks. Old ladies in knit caps and Versace scarves, craning their necks to get a look at me, grandchildren hooked around their necks. Kindness and handshakes at the mid-portion of the service when the priest asked us to introduce ourselves to our neighbours. 

But what mesmerized me, and kept me awake through the service, were the murals. Painted sometime in the thirties, it seems, with strikingly realistic portraits of Sisters and Bishops, and the martyred Fr. Morchheuser in left center panel, they are the most vivid church paintings I’ve ever seen in PNG.

Fr. Morchheuser stands in brilliant white skin amidst his Chimbu flock, none of them rendered as explicitly or as lovingly as the white man, who interfered in a pig theft dispute and was axed to death barely two years after his arrival in 1934.  As Paula Brown wrote in 1943 (The Cimbu 1972[1943]: 25) ,

"Several mission stations were established in 1934—Catholics at Mirani (near Kundiawa), at Kurugu, close to the present Mingende mission, and at Goglme in the Chimbu valley; Lutherans at Ega,adjacent to Kundiawa on the lower Chimbu river and at Kerowagi in the Koro valley. …In December, 1934, and in January, 1935, only months after the first Catholic missions were established, two similar and serious incidents occurred. The Chimbu had stolen goods from the storage rooms of the missions and burnt mission houses. When the thefts were discovered, the mission officials responded by taking property and shooting pigs belonging to the Chimbus. Then, in retaliatory attacks, two missionaries in two separate locations were injured and both later died."

 

God sits above, floating on a wavy cloud and wearing a fin de siecle helmet faintly reminiscent of the L. Frank Baum Ozma of Oz series illustrations by John R. Neill (ca. 1907). But the look is actually deco-depression modern, and might date from the very time Morchheuser was martyred--murals painted in recent homage of the priest.

(The right side mural is more recent and signed: Inspired by Fr. Wojciech, Printed [sic] by Bonex Yaka 2005. )

Two angels have wavy blond hair and headbands, with art deco Eastern-inspired haloes. Dead center is an almostlife-size wooden Christ on cross, possibly older than the panels, who is perfectly subsumed to the colourful highlands landscape behind him.  That time of the morning the yellow louvered windows casts a supernaturally warm morning light across the center scene, and again on smaller murals at each side. I could not keep my eyes from the imagery, from the period metaphors it contained, and the brilliance of its ambience in this modest clapboard church. Somehow I could not take my eyes from Fr. Morchheuser, who looks here so different from his gravesite portrait.   

Passing his grave later that week, we headed up to a refuge for orphans at Irugl, the parish behind Gembogl along the cold remote road leading up to Mt Wilhelm.  In this beautiful place a Dutch man, a lay missionary, had married a Simbu woman and inspired the centre now run by their son Anton. We visited the chapel dedicated to her, a devout Catholic who acquired stigmata on her palms later in life.

 

Two days before, I had stepped out of church in Mingende just before the Mass ended, and entered the bright morning sunshine with a feeling of nostalgia and calm, as if I were walking through Brigadoon with Gene Kelly and knew we’d be swallowed up in the morning mists tomorrow. I marvel at the fussy opulence of Catholic ritual, all the silent precision of cleaning the challis, drying the last drops of Christ’s blood, folding the sacramental tea towel just so, and balancing it atop the silver goblet as the entire congregation stares in absolute quiet.  Absolute wonder. Absolute faith.   Absolute disconnect .

Just as I turned the road past the church grounds, towards the house we were staying in, I noticed a teenage kid walk toward me from the other side of the church ground gates. He’s also come from church, only moments before I left. I smiled, he smiled and moved closer, and in a bold whisper asked, “Sua blong yu orait?’

“What?” I asked. “Yu tok wanem?” and as I stood there, he repeated the question, and  I realized it was a tok bokis reference to my vagina, my ‘sore,’ so to speak.

I shook my head and asked, “Yu wanem kain man?” moving forward, suddenly revived to the present aware again of the chronic dangers women face every day in the highlands.

Somare gets cred for talking REDD

{From the man who has enabled Rimbunan Hijau's wholsesale rape of PNG forests.} 

PM wants to go REDD

PRIME MINISTER Sir Michael Somare today pushed the REDD program in the high level climate change talks in New York.
Sir Michael said PNG’s leadership in having rainforest nations and developing nations recognised as partners in addressing climate change is too important to ignore.
He said, “If we are to work together in the true spirit of nations uniting for the future of our planet and generations to come then we must commit ourselves to implementing
practical measures over the next few days. “As a member co chairperson of the rainforest coalition of nations we must ensure that we can remove the irony of harvesting our forests in the name of development and replace harvesting with the ability to preserve our trees. We must preserve our trees and at the same time find innovative ways to achieve prosperity and progress for our peoples, he said.
Sir Michael was pleased to see the presence of other heads of governments at these talks including Norway, Guyana, Australia, Costa Rica and Brazil which signals their
seriousness and commitment to the issue of climate change and global warming. Sir Michael was equally pleased with the outcome of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) Leaders’ Summit on Climate Change which voted unanimously to recognise in their Leaders Declaration “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” (REDD) and “carbon capture and storage” as options for achieving greater emission targets in a lead up to Copenhagen climate change negotiations in December this year. Sir Michael said in our efforts to defeat deforestation, mobilisation of finance, technology, and capacity building are essential as this will underpin a step-wise process for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon storage in tropical forests. Sir Michael was thankful of the AOSIS Leaders to recognise that REDD initiative require resource mobilisation through a variety of sources which included public, private and market-based verifiable through world’s best environmental standards and practices. He said if we can get it right here in New York during these meetings then we can pave the way for smoother passage at Copenhagen in December. Sir Michael will also be attending the UN REDD Conference chaired by the Secretary General of the United Nations, his Excellency, Mr Ban Ki Moon. He also thanked Ban Ki Moon for his leadership and commitment to dialogue towards reducing Greenhouse Gas and other carbon emissions.

Immersion of coastal areas at high tide is an increasingly common occurrence throughout the Pacific.

CLIMATE change is real and already upon Papua New Guinea, Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare has told the United Nations in New York.
He used the UN meeting on leadership challenge of climate change to reveal that PNG was already suffering the consequences with bleached coral reef, starving fisheries,
atoll-based communities disappearing under rising waves and mosquitoes killing children high up mountain ranges. The time for leadership is now, Sir Michael said, if we are to
defeat this self-inflicted calamity. He proposed that solutions included constructing a shared objective, deepen reduction commitments by industrialised countries, reduce emissions from deforestation, capitalise
adaptation for future generations and mobilise sufficient and sustainable resources. When considering an equitable and shared vision, the voices of the most vulnerable must be
heard, like those with Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Can humanity allow our fragile island societies, with civilisations older than those of North and South America, be
suffocated into silence by the swelling seas? We cannot. He said Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had demonstrated that category 1 targets were affordable and achievable.

No more kumu malo malo

We are not kumu malo malo any longer

 

Things are hotting up in Madang.

One week the sign at Vidar looked like this:

 

 

 

The next week it looks like this:

Protest marches scheduled, plenty of simmering anger at this massive industrial project which sounds like a fait accompli when you read the NFA and RD websites, but which effectively ignores the impact zone for these several foreign canneries, and that includes everyone in the greater Madang area.

 

Why this has become irresistible? Is it the handsome access fees that the NFA pockets? Is it the promise of jobs and spin-off opportunities that earns politicians bragging rights (people drippingly reminded naysayers at the recent Tuna Forum that ‘jobs are the benchmarkof development’)? But surely no one believes that cannery factory line jobs are real employment opportunities, as they neither support families nor represent entry to the industry. No one could take seriously promises of catering/security/cleaning and maintenance jobs for foreign factories as real development? That’s like saying Madang will be the domestic servants of the new Japanese, Filipinno and Chinese middle classes—with every possible double entendre implied. How is it possible that we believe the clustering of five or six (possibly ten?) canneries and fishing industry businesses in the Madang area will not soil the water, pollute the solitude and sanity of the surrounding villages, imperil the tourist industry, endanger ethnic relations and choke the infrastructure and public services of this peaceful town?

 

 

It is possible because PNG is in a race for the profits from this resource before it becomes endangered (imminently) and has opted to compete for the meager benefits that can accrue from harbouring the processing plants instead of investing in its own fishing fleet and sufficiently strict monitoring of its own waters? The logic seems to be that as everyone else is already pirating our fish, we might as well make a quick buck before they're all gone.

 

Everyone considered Madang people to be laid back enough to roll over on this.

 

But villagers have slowly begun to shake themselves from sleep and stand up to say we are not kumu malomalo, not wilted vegetables, any longer.

World Bank gets oil palm cold feet

 

I can’t resist posting this, from yesterday’s Mongobay.com site. WB has gone off oil palm for ‘social and environmental’ reasons, but has no problem facilitating a huge marine industrial zone in Madang---where, presumably, social and environmental qualms are easily overcome.

 

World Bank's IFC suspends lending to palm oil companies
mongabay.com
September 09, 2009

The World Bank has agreed to suspend International Finance Corporation (IFC) funding of the oil palm sector pending the development of safeguards to ensure that lending doesn't cause social or environmental harm, according to a letter by World Bank President Robert Zoellick to NGOs. A recent internal audit found that IFC funding of the Wilmar Group, a plantation developer, violated the IFC's own procedures, allowing commercial concerns to trump environmental and social standards. The audit's findings were championed by environmental and indigenous rights' groups who have criticized World Bank support for industrial oil palm development which they say has driven large-scale destruction of forests in Indonesia, boosting greenhouse gas emissions, endangering rare and charismatic species of wildlife, including the orangutan, and displacing forest communities.

Deforestation for a new oil palm plantation in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo).

Writing to Marcus Colchester, Director of the Forest Peoples Programme, Zoellick said the IFC has suspended new investments in palm oil projects and ordered a review of existing projects, including the Wilmar Group, on social and environmental grounds.

"I have directed IFC management to take all necessary steps to ensure that the problems identified in the CAO audit are not repeated. Furthermore, until we have a new strategy in place, IFC will not approve any new investments in palm oil," wrote Zoellick. "I have also asked IFC to review the environmental and social performance of all portfolio investments in palm oil. We are committed to ensuring that positive development outcomes-including environmental and social sustainability-remain at the core of IFC's development business."

The Forest Peoples Programme last month demanded that the IFC suspend its support for the palm oil sector in Indonesia until it determines how a long list of violations, ranging from deforestation to land grabbing to human rights abuses, were allowed to continue. The group noted that many private banks "look to the IFC for leadership in their lending procedures and use the Performance Standards to guide them."

The letter from Zoellick follows.

---

August 28, 2009 Robert B. Zoellick President The World Bank

Mr. Marcus Colchester Director Forest Peoples Programme

On behalf of Forest Peoples Programme, Perkumpulan SawitWatch, Lembaga Gemawan, Yayasan, SETARA, CAPPA, Save Our Borneo, 'Ulu Foundation, and Down to Earth

Dear Messrs. and Mmes. Colchester, Jiwan, Khairnur, Rofiq, Noor, Nordin, Fried, and Marr,

Thank you for your letter of August 14,2009, regarding IFC investments in Wilmar and conditions in the palm oil sector in Indonesia.

I share your concerns about the detrimental effects of palm oil development when sound environmental and social practices are not followed. While sustainable palm oil production can help meet the livelihood needs of the world's poorest people, and some progress has been made in putting the industry on a more sustainable footing, major challenges remain. IFC has the potential to help improve the industry's environmental performance under the right conditions. I agree, however, that the CAO audit highlighted important deficiencies in IFC's past approach.

Therefore, I have directed IFC management to take all necessary steps to ensure that the problems identified in the CAO audit are not repeated. Furthermore, until we have a new strategy in place, IFC will not approve any new investments in palm oil. I have also asked IFC to review the environmental and social performance of all portfolio investments in palm oil. We are committed to ensuring that positive development outcomes-including environmental and social sustainability-remain at the core of IFC's development business.

The earlier Management Response to the CAO audit outlined in broad terms some of the actions IFC will be taking to correct deficiencies CAO has identified. IFC management has subsequently agreed to a number of additional steps. In response to the CAO audit, IFC will implement the following Action Plan:

• Formulate a comprehensive strategy to guide its involvement in the palm oil sector. As you note, it is essential for IFC to have a strategy for this sector to provide a framework within which it will conduct its investment operations and advisory services, and engage with stakeholders. We also agree that consultation with stakeholders, including industry, financial institutions, civil society, and indigenous peoples' organizations, is a critical part of developing the strategy. I hope that you will contribute actively to this process. The strategy must define the basis and manner in which IFC uses its investments and advisory work to support implementation of more sustainable practices among firms engaged in palm oil-whether as producers or as traders. As an integral part of the strategy, IFC will work only with clients who are committed to achieving internationally recognized certification of their operations. Development of the strategy will also provide an opportunity to analyze the broader issues you mention regarding the sector in Indonesia. IFC is now preparing an interim guidance note and is formulating the consultation process to provide input into the strategy. Our aim is to complete the development of this comprehensive strategy within six months.
• Increase IFC engagement in and support of the RSPO and associated standard-setting process. We agree that bodies such as RSPO play an important role in raising standards in the sector, although they of course are not a substitute for compliance with IFC's own Performance Standards. IFC will support and work directly with the RSPO's Greenhouse Gas and New Plantings working groups and will provide input to the Smallholder Working Group. IFC, through the Biodiversity and Agricultural Commodities Program (BACP), is already supporting the RSPO's Biodiversity Working Group, and the BACP has already approved several pilot projects related to biodiversity issues on palm oil plantations.
• Develop and implement an Advisory Services program targeting the palm oil sector in Indonesia, with special attention to improving the capacity of smallholders/suppliers. We will seek to define this program in consultation with industry, financial institutions, civil society, and indigenous peoples' organizations. Possible areas of focus include: promotion of fair labor practices; promotion of best practices in land tenure/community consultation in association with leading palm oil producing firms; improvement of the enabling environment at the sub-regional level to encourage more widespread adoption of RSPO standards; promotion of RSPO to regional financial institutions; and promotion of community conflict resolution regimes. We are designing this program now and beginning consultations immediately.
• Revise IFC's Environmental and Social Review Procedure to clarify categorization of trade finance investments to ensure that single-commodity, single-company trade finance facilities in environmentally and socially sensitive sectors are categorized based upon potential impacts. Categorization of these projects as "COO was consistent with the then current categorization system for transactions channeled through financial intermediaries, although I understand the staffs debated whether we should take additional action at the time of the investment. In recognition of the shortcomings of the previous system, we are making this change, effective as of August 14,2009, to provide more precise guidance to staff. It is likely to result in categorizing these projects as an "A" or "B," depending on identified risks.
• Strengthen implementation of the existing prohibition against clearing of critical habitat (as defined in IFC Performance Standard 6) or High Conservation Value Forest (as per RSPO Principles and Criteria). In all projects IFC uses Performance Standard 6 to ensure that no critical habitat, including primary forest and sensitive peatlands, is harmed. IFC Performance Standard 6 has been in place since 2006. In the case of the Wilmar plantation companies in Indonesia, we believe on the basis of our analysis and supervision that there was no clearing ofprimary forest, nor were they using burning to clear land for planting.
• Subject to reaching agreement with Wilmar, and as part of IFC's ongoing supervision of Delta-Wilmar, assess the status of the company's environmental and social performance, as well as its existing relationship with local communities affected by its plantation operations, and recommend improvements as necessary. Upon agreement with Wilmar, an IFC environmental and social specialist team will visit Wilmar plantations and a sampling of locally-affected communities by the end of November.

As you know, we are conducting a comprehensive review of lFC's Policy and Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability later this year and next. The review will help to ensure that environmental and social sustainability are at the core of lFC's activities. The first phase of consultation, focusing on identifying the key issues and challenges, will begin in mid-September, with the full review expected to be completed by the end of 2010. The review will involve extensive public consultations and solicitation of inputs from stakeholders-a process in which I hope you will also actively participate.

IFC also now subjects any proposed project involving a company in whose other investments the CAO is already active, either as auditor or mediator, to an additional review by senior management to determine whether or not to proceed. In addition, IFC will highlight any issues for Board members. I have also asked IFC management to meet with Board members to discuss the concerns raised in your letter and IFC's action plan going forward.

As you will see from the above, I share your views about the needs to revise categorization procedures and to prepare a new comprehensive strategy for the sector, including interim notes. I do not, however, believe that our staff committed systematic policy violations. I understand that staff conducted an overview of a number of Wilmar plantations, including selected site visits, and that due diligence concluded that overall these operations were being managed in the spirit of the draft principles of the RSPO. Nonetheless, it is clear that we must have higher levels of due diligence and clearer guidance to staff. That is why the action plan includes steps to ensure that similar projects are handled differently in the future.

I believe these actions, taken together, will strengthen the capacity of IFC to be a positive force for change. However, it is also clear that IFC's interventions cannot be undertaken in isolation. We are exploring the scope for greater collaboration across the World Bank Group in addressing issues in the palm oil sector in Indonesia. To achieve our common aims, we will need the coordinated efforts of civil society organizations such as yours, along with the private sector, all levels of government, industry associations including RSPO, and other multilateral institutions.

Thank you again for your letter. You raised a number of important points. I hope that you will actively contribute to the consultations on the strategy and the Performance Standards review, and we look forward to working with you to improve IFC's performance in the palm oil sector. Sincerely,
Robert B. Zoellick

Yes, we have no bananas

There’s a simple formula. Starve the people of basic infrastructure and services (and take more than few junkets to Malaysia and China), and public eventually learns to jump at any morsel of hope, any false prophet, any gamble whatsoever. Some may called it the Mugabe formula, other might says it’s the Suharto way. But not long after we learn that we are K500 mill overbudget, and that Sir Michael has again suspended Parliament to avoid a vote of no confidence, we get the following Post-Courier headline:

Sex cult vows banana bonus

By Sampson Bonai

A SEX CULT – where members are promised a bumper banana crop if they engage in public sex—has surfaced in the Tekadu area of Wau in the Morobe Province. The Banana Cult is headed by a man from Yamine village. The man and his followers have been engaged in illicit public sex for the past four months and have forced other villagers under threat of violence to participate. The cult activities were brought to light by Yamine village court chairman Titus Namusa who escaped captivity one night and walked 12 hours to Wau to report the matter.

Wau and Bulolo police will begin a special operation at first light today to reach Yamine, which is behind the Wafi gold project, and bust the illegal activities of the cultists. Wau police commander Inspector Adam Busil and Bulolo commander Senior Inspector Pius Moi and five mobile squad policemen will walk into the area today. …

“The chairman was threatened by the cult leader that he would be murdered if he reported the alleged illegal activity to the authorities in Wau and was told to keep shut and be quiet about it.”

Yamine is a tiny hamlet of not more than 30 people in Ward 20 of Wau Local Level Government.

According to Mr Namusa, the villagers resorted to cult activities, claiming the government had forgotten them. Mr Nasmusa said the cultists believed that their banana fruit would multiply 10-fold every time they had sex in public.

 

Held captive in a hut for nearly four months, Mr Namusa  escaped in the middle of the night and walked to Wau where he reported the alleged cult activity to the council manager Tae Guambelek who alerted the police.

“The people are armed and we will move in there and talk to them and will also apprehend the cult leader and bring him back to Wau to be formally arrested and charged for the alleged illegal activities,” Insp Busil said.

Mr Namusa confirmed the cult movement and said young men and women including married couples were walking around naked and having sex in public places without being ashamed of themselves.

“The leader told the people that they have not seen any government services and have resorted to other means of seeing services trickling down to their door steps and ordered about 10 people to get involved in the alleged activity, “ Mr. Namusa said.

Morobe Mining Joint Venture’s security workers also reported to the company management about the sighting of naked people walking around in a group in the vicinity of the mining construction area on one occasion.

Cartels, canneries, pirates and purse seiners. The 2009 Pacific Tuna Forum in Port Moresby

Half the tuna of the world comes from here. Virtually none of the conservation initiatives do.

Last week tuna industry professionals arrived from all over the southern hemisphere, and even Europe, to attend the 2009 Tuna Forum sponsored by Infofish at the Crowne Plaza in Port Moresby. In attendance: lots of dark blue suits, a few ties, one Dastaar turban, several Barong Tagalogs, a few tropical-formal shirts, a remarkable number of speech impediments, and yet very few skirts, and those included Tiffany Nonggorr and myself, sitting more or less at the center of the audience.

I love these events, love the odd mix of snarky bureaucrats and impressive scientists, the slick grinning industrialists who hold court for two days at the Crowne Plaza coffee shop, and the hardcore conservation NGO reps who pace and patrol the peripheries. You get the feeling no one feels entirely in their element and most everyone is looking over their shoulder. The World Bank and EU reps sit next to rough purse seiners and fisheries yes-men, just as the Palauan Whaling Commission rep and a former CITES Secretary General presented the most astonishing anti-conservation papers on a panel of global Greenpeace and Friend of the Sea experts. Head spinning. But one thing can be said about the programming: everything was stacked against the industry nay-sayers, as they were all clustered in the last two panels of the last day, well beyond the point of general discussions, much less real questions and answers. It was left to the very last speaker on the last day (Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s Johann Bell) to reveal models of global warming’s potential impact on the Pacific tuna stock—possibly rendering most of the industry optimism irrelevant.

Of course it wouldn’t be satisfying forum is there weren’t some acrimony along the way, and Im happy to say both Tiff and I did our best to stir a lot of it, wading as we had to through the sea of fishy phalluses, someone very clever commented.  RD’s Pete Celso spoke on PNG’s tuna industry and the opportunities it has to offer, leaving real discussion of the proposed Pacific Marine Industrial Zone to Anton Kulit of the department of Commerce and Industry, who presented much the same glowing projections as we’ve come to know now. But when a discussion of the touted ’10,000 PNG jobs’ in the PMIZ got prickly, the World Bank’s Peter Cusak sniffed at the suggestion that this might be a paltry quid pro quo for the country, saying 10,000 jobs would feed 7000 families.

 

 I spat the dummy, I admit, and barked that there is no evidence that 10,000 jobs at K80 a fortnight (for women on the canning line)feeds anyone, and in fact more likely impoverishes the community, and so forth, at which National Fisheries Authority’s MD and world class mumbler stood to defy me saying (from what we could make out) he resented these ‘NGOs and people like Tiff and myself’ who dismiss these jobs when the people desperately need them ---who are we to talk?---and how he’d read my web site and all the terrible things Id been writing about the PMIZ, etc etc. Not entirely sure this was directed to myself or all the demonized ‘NGOs’ (the new bugbear of reckless development)---Tiff and I both looked at each other saying, “Im not an NGO”---I didn’t respond. This may have made Pokajam seem even more unhinged, maybe not, but it did result in a phalanx of RD Tuna come to inveigh upon me at the break how ‘we must talk.’ I said something to effect that they live in General Santos City and yet I choose to live in Madang, and I desperately hope to maintain the distinction. But it was Tiff on the second day, within another retort to a speaker, who landed the best response to Pokajam by saying, Listen, my kids are Papua New Guinean and I don’t want them to be working for 60 to 80 kina a fortnight, making slave wages when foreign investors are making the real profits here. (Touche).

This brings me to the most important point culled from the entire event, which is the general consensus that Papua New Guineans can and should not be fishing their own tuna.

Why? We ask. The nation sitting most comfortable within the twenty north and twenty south (of the equator) tuna belt, home to some of the oldest continuous fisherpeople of the world-- fathers of the first open water navigational systems, where coastal fisheries thrive in all but the landlocked provinces, where the single most important component of coastal people’s diets is fish, and where children learn to drop lines with their mothers while they’re still at the breast---is alone the only country that ‘cannot purse seine!!!

What???

Everyone we asked, everywhere we turned, industry, government, even empathetic scientists told us it was too expensive, too ambitious and too soon for Papua New Guineans to purse seine their own tuna. The boats are costly, yes. But the government’s investment in the PMIZ is more than enough seed money for a small fleet. Training? Do we not have one of the best Maritime Colleges in the Pacific (based here in Madang!)? How is it we cannot train tuna purse seiners?

The point is, were tuna any other PNG resource---like gold, nickel, timber or copra---we would be scrambling to control it from point of origin to point of sale. But in the case of tuna, PNG is perfectly happy taking (increasingly lucrative) access fees from foreign vessels and entering a Faustian Contract with unlimited overseas canneries (who provide little more than menial short-term dead-end jobs, enjoy tax holidays, enrich only the new Chinese-owned trade stores with the wee bits of wage money that enter the economy, pollute our seas, disturb our coastal fisheries, threaten our tourism industry, and---lest we forget!---deplete our tuna stocks with and overfishing and piracy).

It was Henk Brus from the Atuna tuna trading company who told us the best thing for Pacific Island States to do would be to harvest our resources and allow someone else to process them. This was bucking the trend, and sounded so reasonable. Look at the oil industry, he said. Be a cartel! Tuna is oil, and so, like the oil countries, the island states need to gain more control over their own resources. Profile the South Pacific tuna as being sustainable---brand it green and regulate it carefully. This will increase tuna revenues, as less tuna means more profit. More demand for skipjack and albacore and less demand for yellowfin can only be good for the region.

How can the Western Central Pacific island nations benefit? By processing basic tuna products and precooked loins. Stop value adding or downstream processing, he said. Focus on harvesting and pre-processing—creating basic but not advanced tuna products---leave the advanced refineries to others. Concentrate on service innovation, not product innovation—improve the pipeline, he suggested; make it more efficient, cultivate the pole and line niche markets, highlight the artisanal nature of fisheries here, and start superfreezing loins. At one point he said (and I recorded him saying), “Don’t build canneries when you don’t have a pipeline to get the oil out, so to speak. Improve the logistics and cooperation between countries.”

It was at this point that Tiff did what she does best, she got to the heart of the matter and did so with a smile. Apologizing for being a lawyer, not an industry person, and for having greater experience in the mining and timber sectors than in fisheries, she wanted to ask the panel at large what PNG might do to benefit more from this resource. I mean if Mr Brus believes we should harvest not process more, then how can we encourage this? What is the best investment for our industry and government now? Should Department of Commerce and Industry [represented at this Forum by Anton Kulit] create incentives for Papua New Guineans to invest in these canneries, and move from the slave’s seat to the owner’s seat.  We need to be harvesters, to benefit at the top rather than bottom level. Where is the value chain here and how can we get aboard? Why are we talking about menial wage jobs as the benchmarks for development and arguing that the learning curve is too steep for us to be fishing our own tuna?

Someone on the panel said that when “people” get subsidized for easy loans “it usually ends in failure.” Papua New Guineans are better off monitoring and managing these resources, not harvesting them. Blah blah blah.

Tiff interjects: “But wait---we get no royalties from fish, where we do from minerals!”

The only time either Tiff or I received a reasonable answer to why PNG cannot fish  was when one of the industry people mentioned how the access fees to the NFA had exploded in the last few years from roughly K5 mill annually, to something between K20 and K40 million currently. So much for the NFA MD’s empathy for the working girls on the factory line.

Two important conclusions could be drawn from the forum by the second day. One is that an enormous amount of IUU and pirated fish is being lost from our waters, and the very lack of control, PNG’s clear inability to monitor this resource depletion (despite industry assertions that Vessel Management Systems and Vessel Day Schemes can actually be policed ----which is like asking bank robbers to drive safely) augurs very poorly for the plan to bring in endless numbers of new foreign canneries. Apparently Spain is lurking in the high seas just outside our EEZ as we speak---along with our old nemeses, Chinese and Filipino vessels who like to turn off their VMD while they transship PNG tuna to the motherships. And with the ban on the completely depleted Mediterranean Bigeye tuna, more and more European flagged ships will be joining them.

The second point was made very clearly by Johann Bell’s global warming presentation, and that was that the climate in the next two decades may seriously undermine those ‘economies scale’ everyone wafts on about for the proposed PMIZ. His Spatial Ecosystem and Population Dynamic Model (SEAPDM) shows a pattern of SJ’s future as the epicenter of abundance moving east across the pacific by 2050, then very east by 2100. The models suggest that as the oceans warm, and the cold tongue that enters the Western South Pacific just east of PNG, which feeds nutrient-rich zooplankton into our tuna field, providing a steady stream of good food that seems to the world’s densest tuna stocks, will be moving east. With it, will go the tuna. It cannot be calculated where or when exactly the shift will occur, but it is clearly going to mean traveling farther and farther from Madang’s north coast for the international fishing vessels to access this rich vein of Skipjack. Will the profit projections be skewed?

The most impressive presentation for me had to be from Lagi Toribau, Greenpeace Fiji, who argued succinctly and convincingly for the closure of all high seas zones between Pacific Island EEZs to fishing, because, as we have long known, nothing can be known or counted or policed in these holes that he referred to as the pirates’ escape hatches. Once again we heard about the Filipino vessels found just north of PNG with their Vessel Monitoring Systems conveniently turned off as they transhipped legal along with illegal tuna to the Taiwanese-owned mother ship from General Santos City. The fact that Gen Santos is now suffering, and that so many European industries are in need of Pacific fish now, bodes very badly for our future.

Toribau’s paper was called ‘Fate of key tuna species.’ 2008 was the highest tuna catch ever, he told us, at over 2.4 mill tones. Ours is a $3.9 billion US tuna fishery in the region, with only a 6%-8% return to Pacific Island Countries. Illegal fishing is rife, putting all these numbers in question, and yet it has yet to become a real economic issue in the industry. Some say 10-34% of our total catch is illegal. Under reporting and mis reporting of catch on legally authorized vessels is only half the problem. Illegal vessels are operating with legal vessels usually belonging to the same fleet ---pirate vessels working in high seas pockets to avoid monitoring and enforcement. This is currently unenforceable, a veritable free for all for some.

His recommendations are:

· 50% reduction of overall fisheries based on 2001-4 average levels---be guided by a precautionary approach; helps the profitability of fisheries, which is only marginally profitable now and depend on govt preferences and exclusions

· Closure of all high seas pockets between 20 N and 20 S---and extended to longlining too, where they are plundering on the high seas, especially BE. This closes off pirate escape routes

· A ban on at sea transshipment---completely unreportable

· Development of a sustainable and equitable pole and line fisheries (results from pole and line workshop that occurred on Tuesday) especially re catch of juvenile BE and YF this seems necessary, as current operations are unsustainable

The market will survive, he told us, and be better for it. Coastal state owned fleets are the most equitable, we also heard (again, a good case for PNG fishing its own tuna).

I will be blogging again on the forum, but for now I want to close with a few highlights. Apparently I missed a heated exchange on the first day, when I left before the question and answers, but Kazuo Shima, President of the Japan Far Seas Purse Seine Fishing Association (and former Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission) was asked by a woman in the audience whether it wasn’t true that the Japanese Purse Seiners admit to netting and selling 100 dolphins per annum, and the convener, obviously displeased, asked whether this was or was not a tuna question. Yes it is a tuna question, the woman answered, before being cut off. Shima ultimately told the audience he had no problem selling dolphins where there is a market for them.---and as I learned later, there was barely a hiss from the crowd.

 

I’m reminded of the newest HSBC ads, one of which has become my favourite: a fisherman is hauling up a net filled with fish as his crew cheers, and then we see the largest fish is a dolphin; a woman’s voiceover tells us We at HSBC understand that people’s values influence their economic choices…and we see the fisherman drop the entire catch back into the sea, turn, and smile with satisfaction.

 

The second day Shima was in top form presenting a powerpoint on how Japanese appetites have changed since WWII, when whale meat saved the country from starvation (which has made it a sentimental favourite ever since—even though one would hope such sentimentality would extend to preserving rather than decimating the whale), and a slide materialised showing a 1952 Japanese school lunch with whale meat as the main event, once again causing nary a gasp; followed by an image of the new ‘western’ breakfast in Japan with the caption “Easy, husbands can make.”

Finally, my favourite program bio comes from the former CITES Secretary-General, the one arguing NOT to place Atlantic tuna on the CITES list. Other speakers listed their professional credentials, their memberships, degrees and publications, sometimes their special interests. But here we read that this speaker

“learned from and lived with nature in the vast wilderness of Canada which was very much a part of his young life. At the age of seven, he was catching partridges and rabbits to help feed his family who lived 50 miles (80 km) from civilisation. In this rustic setting, he learned that to survive, one must use sparingly what nature has to offer…He can be described as an optimistic humanist who truly believes in the merits of human nature.”

I am not sure to whom he had pitched this appeal, but barely a week before,  I attended a gender violence symposium where the European convener had similarly felt the need to remind an audience filled with Papua New Guinean women that all the advances in feminism to date have come from Europe. Extraordinary. Anything goes in the Conference Culture of the developing world. The Tuna Forum ended, as we all suspected, with sloppy karaoke and scores of big plastic ‘trophies’ for each speaker.

August Baby Nancy and I traveled to the US, to my father’s memorial in Vermont

. She was feted and fussed over by every relative. Caught firefly fairies in a jar (and when they faded, blew on them until they reignited); rode a bike, swam at the local pool; and overwhelmed by the food choices, ate many hotdogs for breakfast. We found a fairy dress at K Mart straight away and she wore it through the streets of Burlington, with wings, wand and tiara, until she was forced to ask, Blong wanem oli lukluk strong long mi? Why are they staring?  There was a terrible moment on another shopping trip when she found the pink princess shoes we’d bought were much too small, made for a 5 year old American it appears, and not a 7 year old Papua New Guinean. She fell into a funk, snarling that she wasn’t a princess after all because the shoe didn’t fit, and only cheered up when we went to see UP, the movie, on what she called the biggest TV screen ever.

We took a rental car and some Harry Potter audio CDs and drove from Vermont to Massachusetts to see Deborah and Fred, who live in the beautiful woods of Amherst, in a house with spectacular views in back. Then we went to see Susan and Zach, and Brad, Susan, Iris, Jack and Peter, all in a house in Southampton, where we inflated the dolphin and swam some more, and visited Zach at the Watermill Center, where Robert [Einstein n the Beach]Wilson spotted Nancy in full fairy regalia and expressed interest in working with her in the future, of all things. I signed up as her agent. Jack and Peter, the most celebrated performers of all of us, with the most colorful hair I should add, were gracious about being upstaged by this niece-cum-ingénue with but a halting command of English and cheap flashy wardrobe.  Their doppelganger.

Last stop was to see Beth, in Connecticut, where we sat by a country club pool and Nancy joined a group of teenage boys doing flips from the diving board all afternoon. Then she styled Beth’s mother’s hair and charmed Matt, beth’s brother, into taking us out on the speedboat. And finally we arrived in San Francisco to see the preternaturally youthful and fit Jeannie and Jim, for a final workout that almost exhausted and Nancy and nearly killed me. We climbed a mountain with our hearts hammering and feeling faint, drank lemonade at the top, and came down in single file behind Baby Nancy, who sang Oliver and Mary Poppins songs at the top of her lungs. Suoercalafragilisticexpialadocious. If you say it loud enough it just might sound precocious. Where ere ere ere ere is love? Is it in the stars above?

Id forgotten that being in a house with 5 kids is a lot different than having a concentrated month with one. I fee  like Ive been twittered every 30 seconds since mid July.

Africa's bad example

The following arrived by email from Barry Lally with the question, 'Sound familiar?'

 

The dark underside of Chinese building boom 

Geoffrey York

Windhoek — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail, Wednesday, Jun. 24, 2009

There might be a global recession, but you wouldn't know it from a visit to Namibia's booming capital.
 
This former German colonial city in southwestern Africa, with its tidy streets and Bavarian architecture, is alive with construction activity. Cranes are towering over the city centre, many flying the distinctive red banner of China.
 
But Globe and Mail interviews in Namibia reveal a dark underside to the building boom: illegal labour practices by state-owned Chinese companies that dodge safety rules and pay their construction workers far below the minimum wage.
 
These labour violations have become widespread at Chinese companies across Africa, giving them an unfair advantage and allowing them to push their local competitors out of business, a new study says.
 
The study, funded by trade unions, alleges that the Chinese investment boom in Africa is fuelled by the exploitation of African workers. While many African leaders have welcomed the Chinese business invasion, the study documents a pattern of labour abuses across the continent, suggesting that Chinese investors are achieving their commercial successes on the back of cheap wages and violations of labour laws.
 
In Namibia, for example, the study found that every Chinese construction company was paying far less than minimum wage. In Malawi and Ghana, many employees of Chinese companies are required to work up to 12 hours without a break, sometimes for seven days a week. In Nigeria and Kenya, workers at some Chinese factories are locked inside their factories all day to prevent them from leaving, resulting in dozens of deaths when fires broke out.
 
“Chinese companies are particularly notorious in terms of the impunity with which they flout national labour laws, including health and safety standards,” the study said. “In some cases these companies receive the support of government agencies to violate labour regulations.”
Workers in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, confirmed that they face the threat of losing their jobs if they object to the Chinese violations of labour laws. “If we complain, they fire us,” one Namibian worker said in a Globe interview at a construction site where a Chinese company is building the Works and Transport Ministry headquarters.
 
The worker said the Chinese company is paying him the equivalent of 63 cents an hour. The minimum wage for entry-level construction workers in Namibia is about $1.27 an hour.
A visit to several Chinese construction sites in Windhoek found that many of the construction workers were not wearing safety helmets. Some said their Chinese employers required them to pay for their own safety equipment. They were charged more than $4 for a helmet, $1.40 for gloves and more than $11 for overalls – substantial sums of money in an African country. “It's not a nice place,” said another worker at the ministry construction site, who said he was trying to find a new job.
 
The 420-page study by the African Labour Research Network, based on two years of research, focuses on Chinese employers in 10 African countries, where Chinese trade and investment has soared dramatically in recent years. China is now Africa's biggest trading partner, and hundreds of Chinese companies have set up a major presence.
 
In the vast majority of cases, the study found, Chinese companies refuse to sign employment contracts with their workers, treating them as “casual workers” to deprive them of their legally required benefits. This led to routine 12-hour days, forced overtime without extra pay, the firing of female workers who became pregnant and other abuses.
“Workers knew that a refusal to work such long hours would lead to automatic dismissal,” the report said.
 
“In blatant violation of local labour laws, most Chinese companies denied African workers annual leave, sick leave, maternity leave and compassionate leave. … In Angola, many female workers at Chinese companies were unaware of their right to paid maternity leave and as a result worked until they gave birth and returned to work shortly afterwards.”
The “locking-in” of workers at Chinese factories was a “particularly grave” violation of their rights, the report said. At a Chinese factory in Malawi, the researchers had to talk to workers through a window because they were locked inside during their lunch break.
Violations of health and safety rules were equally serious. In Malawi, workers at a Chinese construction company had to mix cement with their bare hands. “Only very few Chinese employers provided their staff with protective clothing and equipment,” the study said.
“The toilets at most Chinese companies were found to be in a deplorable state and posed severe health risks for workers. In some cases, toilets were also used as change rooms and even ‘canteens' where workers ate from.”
 
Herbert Jauch, a researcher at the Labour Resource and Research Institute in Namibia and one of the authors of the study, said the Chinese companies were among the worst employers in almost every African country that the study looked at. “African workers are going back to the same horrific working conditions that their fathers suffered under colonial rule,” he said.
 
“Our message to China is, ‘Your rhetoric about a new partnership with Africa, not a new colonial master relationship, has to be matched by better labour standards.'“ African companies are finding it “virtually impossible” to compete with the Chinese companies, he said. “It's getting more and more difficult to survive. We've already seen some companies disappearing. They've set the spiral in motion, and it's becoming a dog-eat-dog industry.”